Amphion’s New Partner Company, PrivateMarkets Inc.,
Completes $3.75 million Series A Financing
London and New York, 3 March 2008 – Amphion Innovations plc (LSE: AMP) the developer of medical and technology businesses, today announces that one of its Partner Companies, PrivateMarkets Inc. (formally Energy Trading International), the leading provider of electronic trading services for bilateral structured transactions, has raised $3.75 million in a Series A financing at $1.00 per share. Amphion now owns approximately 28 per cent of the issued voting share capital on a fully diluted basis. Following this fundraising, PrivateMarkets is now valued at $14.6 million post new money.
PrivateMarkets is one of Amphion’s new Partner Companies. A spinout of Amphion Partner Company, FireStar Software, PrivateMarkets has introduced the first and only service for the bilateral, structured trading of energy commodities. PrivateMarkets brings the power of an electronic trading platform to those segments of the market that otherwise find no acceptable alternative to voice trading via phone, email, FAX, or IM. The company creates a unique Virtual Private Market™ that is ideal for the special physical hedging and trading needs of non-retail consumers of energy commodities including industrials, wholesalers, municipal utilities, and investor owned utilities. PrivateMarkets has licensed the FireStar EdgeNode™ technology as a basis for their trading platform.
PrivateMarkets is initially marketing its product to the electricity and gas markets in the US, but plans to expand its operations to other commodity markets in the US, as well as globally. In the US alone, the total addressable market for the company is well in excess of $1 billion per year.
Chris Sanders, Chief Executive Officer of PrivateMarkets said, “We are very excited about the reaction of the marketplace to our product thus far. This round of financing will allow us to expand and strengthen the sales and marketing infrastructure we need to leverage the very significant market opportunity for our product.”
The company has recently completed a customer pilot of the service in the Texas power market and it recently announced the production launch of its service. PrivateMarkets plans to focus initially on the Texas power market and then to expand to include both power and natural gas for Texas and other regions across the US prior to expansion internationally.
Richard C.E. Morgan, Chief Executive Officer of Amphion said, “Electronic trading has created tremendous value for the companies that enable that trading, as well as in the markets themselves. PrivateMarkets has focused on a portion of the multi-trillion dollar global market for the trading of commodities where existing electronic trading platforms are simply not an effective option. We are excited to add PrivateMarkets to our family of Partner Companies and look forward to being able to report even further developments in the future.”
For further information please contact
Amphion Innovations plc
Charlie Morgan, Director of Communications
+1 212 210 6224
Cardew Group
Tim Robertson/ Jamie Milton/ Matthew Law
+44 020 7930 0777
Charles Stanley Securities - Nominated Adviser
Mark Taylor / Freddy Crossley
+44 20 7149 6000
About Amphion Innovations plc
Amphion (LSE: AMP) builds shareholder value in high growth companies in the medical and technology sectors, by using a focused, hands-on company building approach, based on decades of experience in both the US and UK.
Amphion has significant shareholding in 10 Partner Companies developing proven technologies targeting substantial commercial marketplaces, each in excess of $1 billion. Each Partner Company is chosen with the goal of achieving an exit valuation in excess of $100 million.
On the web: www.amphionplc.com
About PrivateMarkets Inc.
PrivateMarkets, Inc. is the leading provider of bilateral electronic structured transaction solutions for energy commodities. PrivateMarkets™ brings the power of an electronic trading platform to those segments of the market that otherwise find no acceptable alternative to voice trading via phone, email, FAX, or IM. Its unique, patent-pending Virtual Private Market™ allows traders to electronically create a private marketplace of known counterparties and structure each trade to match their specific needs. Unlike exchanges, PrivateMarkets does not impose business conditions on existing counterparty bilateral contractual relationships. PrivateMarkets is a private company backed by Amphion Innovations plc, a publicly-held company (LSE: AMP) that creates, operates and finances life science and technology companies in partnership with corporations, governments, universities and entrepreneurs. The Company was founded in 2007 as Energy Trading International, and changed is name to PrivateMarkets in early 2008 to better reflect the nature of its product and markets.
On the web: www.privatemarkets.com
