Mobile chip firm files $13.8M IPO
Santa Barbara-based Resonant has filed for an initial public offering to raise up to $13.8 million and has disclosed a development agreement with Skyworks, a major chip supplier for Apple’s iPhone.
The funding round would build on a $7 million private placement that Resonant raised last summer. The company is a spinout of Superconductor Technologies, a firm that was working on materials to transmit electricity more efficiently before it moved its headquarters to Austin, Texas in 2012.
Resonant makes a component called a duplexer, which sits between the analog antenna and digital parts of a mobile phone and selects which frequencies to use for sending and receiving signals. Current duplexers can only handle a set number of frequency bands at a time, which has caused them to take up more space and cost in newer bandwidth-hungry designs.
Resonant’s device can be reconfigured to handle different bands, lowering costs and saving space, the company said. Resonant has a development deal with Skyworks, which has a major manufacturing facility in Thousand Oaks and supplies chips to Apple and other mobile phone makers. The terms of the deal give Skyworks the right to the be the first to license Resonant’s design.
“We expect to complete work on a production-ready duplexer design before the end of 2014,” Resonant said in its filing.
Resonant does not yet have revenue and will go public under so-called “emerging growth company” rules that allow it to disclose less information than larger companies. Superconductor Technologies retains an 18.5 percent stake in the company. Lone Wolf Holdings, a New York-based fund headed by Peter Appel, owns 24.1 percent of the firm. MDB Capital Group is underwriting the deal.
