Fleetmatics raises $125m in NYSE flotation

IRISH-BASED SOFTWARE business Fleetmatics raised $125 million when it floated on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday after pricing its shares at the upper end of the expected range.

The company, which develops and sells fleet-management software for small and medium-sized businesses, offered its shares at $17 when it launched.

The flotation raised a total of $125 million, net of expenses, for the company. Chief executive Jim Travers said the cash would be used to develop new products and grow the business generally.

The shares made early gains, adding 32 per cent by 1pm New York time to $22.56 from the launch price of $17.

Its opening price was at the upper end of the range indicated in its initial filings with US markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The $17-a-share price valued Fleetmatics at over $585 million. The company sold 7.8 million shares yesterday. Law firm Maples Calder acted as advisers on the flotation.

Mr Travers said yesterday that the company was dealing with accounting problems that had been highlighted earlier this year by its auditors. The issues included how it dealt with intercompany transactions and accounted for its takeover of US rival Sagequest.

Mr Travers said most of the remedial action needed to deal with the problem had been taken and its auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, had confirmed to the company that its controls had improved over the first and second quarters of this year.

“We are implementing a new accounting system and we have hired extra staff,” he said, adding that the company was confident that its accounts would meet the standards required of publicly traded companies.

Fleetmatics was originally backed by Bill McCabe’s Oyster Capital, which sold it to Investcorp Technology Partners in 2010.

The company recently made a final $7.8 million payment to Oyster in full satisfaction of the original agreement, which included an earn-out clause.

Fleetmatics headquarters are in Dublin and it has a number of offices across the US, where it does much of its business.

The company’s fleet-tracking software, which sells under the Fleetmatics and Sagequest brands, is installed in about 280,000 vehicles around the world.