IDEX ASA has received a substantial investment from a prominent investment fund management firm, the company has announced. Woodford Investment Management has bought NOK 297 million ($37 million USD) in IDEX shares.
The investment gives Woodford a substantial stake in the company, as it now holds 11.2 percent of IDEX’s stock. It’s a sign of strong confidence in the fingerprint biometrics company. In a statement, IDEX CEO Hemant Mardia expressed his pleasure at the investment, and noted that Woodford’s “founder and fund manager Neil Woodford has an outstanding investment track record, and we believe the investment into IDEX is a strong recognition of the huge value creation potential of IDEX’s fingerprint sensor technology.”
There’s good reason to be optimistic about the company’s prospects. In February, IDEX made some major changes to its management team in an effort to reposition the company for the global market. It then proceeded to develop a new fingerprint scanner in a partnership with Cypress Semiconductor Corp., a member of the influential FIDO Alliance that could help IDEX to find other potential collaborative opportunities in the future.
Moreover, Mardia notes that IDEX has a number of products in development and is well funded, adding that Woodford’s “additional funding will enable IDEX to seize the opportunity to further expand the organization, in order to increase our value proposition in mobile with major customers, and in parallel to address the significant adjacent mass market opportunities that have been catalyzed by smartphone adoption including biometric cards where IDEX technology is ideally suited.”
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March 27, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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