RuggedCom announces IPO plans
RuggedCom, a maker of ruggedized networking devices for the power sector, has announced plans to list publicly on the Toronto Stock Exchange and filed its preliminary prospectus on the proposed offering. This Toronto-area company has been dubbed the “Cisco of the smart grid” because its products enable the move toward an electricity system that is automated, self-healing and, ultimately, intelligent. Specifically, RuggedCom develops ethernet switches and routers that can handle the two-way flow of immense amounts of data, and at the same time operate reliably in harsh environments where high-voltage power spikes and extreme temperatures can render standard networking equipment useless or unreliable. I wrote about RuggedCom in the Star last August.
The company is growing like wildfire, as you’ll see from the prospectus, and it’s highly profitable, making it a great candidate for an IPO. It’s good to see.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
May 19th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Unfortunately for the Canadian cleantech sector, RuggedCom’s early success probably makes it an attractive take-over target for a foreign player. What’s been happening in the Vancouver fuel-cell industry over the past month is probably a precursor to what is to come.
Consolidation is the next phase of cleantech’s evolution and the better Canadian firms risk, unfortunately, getting swallowed up in the process.
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:05 am
I find it amazing that RuggedCom spin themselves as such a big player…..