IPO values digital publishing & collaboration specialist Azurn at $45m

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 19 August 2009 08:50

IT Industry - Strategy

Azurn International, a Melbourne headquartered global company with a unique approach to unified communications and online publishing has listed on the Australian Stock Exchange under the symbol AZU after a successful IPO that gives the company a market capitalisation of $45 million.

Azurn has issued 5.58 million new 20 cent shares to raise $1.14 million. It is the company's third attempt at an IPO. In September 2005 it issued a prospectus to raise $7 million through the issue of 14 million 50 cents shares representing some 23.3 percent of total equity.

Then in March this year it announced plans to raise $3 million through the issue of 15 million shares at $0.20. It said at the time that this would have given it a market capitalisation of about $50m. That offer was expected to close by the end of March and the company expected to start trading on the ASX before the end of April. Azurn had been an unlisted public company since 2004.

According to CEO and managing director, Ananda Rao, Azurn's unique value proposition is that its technology "seamlessly integrates audio, video and data content to be delivered, across any carrier network, including the Internet, broadband, telephone and wireless protocols, and to any device such as computers, mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)."

He told iTWire that Azurn's approach differed fundamentally from other vendors' unified communications offering in that they all seek to unify different modes of communication - voice telephony, email, video, instant messaging etc over an IP network whereas the Azurn technology is able to provide unification and interworking across multiple technologies.

"The real benefit to the users is that it provides a complete platform for real-time, multi-party interactivity, effectively acting as a 'one stop shop' for digital convergence."

Azurn's technology is implemented on its Merlin box that, according to Azurn "allows users to converge their wireless, PSTN and broadband carrier networks without the need and cost of deploying additional equipment." Rao contrasted this to the traditional approach to unified comms, which he said required significant investment to deliver the functionality within an enterprise over its IP based network, but did not extend to external parties using other types of networks.

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