The sale of a Sweden-based company using declassified missile-targeting technology would hardly stir much excitement but for two reasons – its price and the buyer’s plans for it.
That the world’s largest technology company, Apple, was willing to pay Skr1.75bn ($260m) for C3 Technologies caught many people’s eyes as the fourth-largest technology exit in Sweden in the past decade.
Industrial group Saab’s corporate venturing unit, Saab Ventures, owned 57.8% of C3 on a fully diluted basis having previously sold another third to Verdane Capital, the Nordic market’s largest independent manager of secondaries-direct funds.
Saab said in July it had sold its stake for Skr1bn – a nine-times return on its holding valuation for C3 of Skr103m – without revealing the purchaser, which leaked out in late October.
In a presentation in November, Fredrik Nordh, head of Saab Ventures, said the group had spent nine months developing the missile technology before launching C3 in 2008.
He said over the three years to the end of 2010, C3 had gained five customers, including Nokia, and had orders worth Skr150m for its Rapid Mapping Technology to be used in consumer applications. Saab Ventures retains R3DM, which has rights to military applications.
Apple’s interest was in C3’s mapping technology, providing three-dimensional (3D) views of streets and rooms inside buildings that can be rotated because each individual pixel includes depth information, and multiple views of the same place can create a stereo-visual effect.
The 3D data is calculated directly from high-resolution aerial photography, based on the positions and angles of the cameras to give each pixel its geographical position.
Apple’s iPhones have used search engine Google’s Maps application, but the company is reportedly looking to develop its own proprietary service through the acquisition of C3, following earlier deals for Placebase and Poly9, according to news provider 9to5Mac, which added that Mattias Astrom, chief executive of C3 Technologies, chief finacial officer Kjell Cederstrand and lead product manager Ludvig Emgard were now working within Apple’s iOS division. They remained based in Sweden in a unit called Sputnik.
For Saab Ventures, which has changed senior management, with Fredrik Rosenqvist moving to an internal group to be replaced by Nordh, the exit helps validate a unit that has over the past decade built a strong reputation for spinning in as well as out some technologies from its research and development unit.
The unit has an internal rate of return, or annual performance, of about 20%, Nordh said in his pres-entation in Brazil. These other exits include Airborne Hydro graphy, Linus, Sanguistech, A2 Acoustics, MX Composites, SMM Medical, HS Memory, Efieldand Image Systems.
Of its remaining portfolio, Nordh said Saab owned a third of IsoTechnologies (virtual training), 5% of Tracab (digitising sports), 22.6% of Wrap International (spec-trum management software), 13% of Minesto (tidal energy solution), 28% of Cold Cut Systems (fireextin-guishers), 8% of Protaurius (mobile ballistic protection), 27% of C-leanship (underwater hull cleaning) and all of Opax (intelligent video surveillance).