Metapath Software: September 1997

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Metapath Software: September 1997 1. Describe Metapath Software and its successes and challenges to date. Metapath Software was formed in January 1995 with a mission to build a software product that allowed wireless carriers to see what calls were on their network at any time. Despite very slow sales at first, in February 1996 the company rejected Securicor Telescience’s offer to purchase the company. Soon after, the company raised more capital from their existing investor Bessemer Venture Partners as well as from Northwest Capital and US Venture Partners. Business was progressing well and in the quarter before September 1997, the company had revenues of $6.4 million with 3 big customers, and an offer to purchase from CellTech. Hansen planned for the company to be able to go public within 2 years if it gained more customers since it was too risky to depend on just 4 accounts, and maintained more stable revenues. Overall the company had raised $9 million in 4 rounds of fundraising. 2. Describe the two offers that are presented to Metapath. Which would you choose? Why? RHC made an offer to Metapath for shares of redeemable preferred stock. Metapath received an offer to be acquired by CellTech for company $115 million in common stock. This offer provided Metapath operating benefits because CellTech already has a strong customer and marketing base, and CellTech’s engineers could be beneficial to Metapath’s development group. In addition, $115 million was attractive to a company with a run rate of $25.6 million and this promised liquidity to shareholders in the near future, a lot sooner than an IPO that was over a year away. Also, this deal would not dilute the ownership of existing shareholders. However, one of Metapath’s board members was not confident of CellTech although the stock price in the past 3 months exceeded the IPO price. Financial analysts

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