Open RAN vendor Mavenir cited ‘market volatility’ as it dropped a planned initial public offering (IPO) in the US, but indicated it may reconsider the move in the future.
In a brief press statement, Mavenir explained it will “reassess the market conditions in the coming months and will keep the market informed.” In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it requested regulatory fees paid for the IPO be “credited for future use”.
In the IPO, Mavenir was originally due to sell 13.6 million shares at $20-$24 each. But last week it first cut the planned sale to 12.5 million at the same price – reducing the maximum funds available from $326 million to $300 million – before dropping the idea altogether.
The cloud-native software company recently purchased UK small-cell company ip.access. The ip.access acquisition was a relatively small deal, as the Cambridge-based company had sales of only £9.3 million in the year to March 2020, but Mavenir sees the deal as part of its expansion as the mobile industry moves to 5G.
Pardeep Kohli, Mavenir’s president and CEO, said in September: “Operators are looking to transform their 2G/3G networks as they migrate to 4G and 5G. We expect to provide a seamless, multi radio access technology single RAN offering for those operators that allows them to have the benefits of advanced radio solutions across all layers.”
Paperwork submitted to the SEC showed Mavenir recorded a loss of $81 million with revenue of $427.4 million in its fiscal year 2019 (ended 31 January). In the six months to 31 July it posted revenue of $234.8 million and a loss of $5.5 million.
