True to its promise, Celoxica has floated on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange.

The reconfigurable logic specialist completed its initial public offering today (Thursday October 27, 2005) raising a total of £6.1m, which will be put towards product development and to bolster sales and marketing.

Chief executive Phil Bishop, who took over the helm at Celoxica just over three years ago, has always stated his intention to take the firm public. This is despite the difficult market conditions which have dogged the EDA industry in recent years.

More recently, the market forced the firm to drop its proposed share price. It had previously hoped to take £10m in cash from the flotation.

"It [the money raised] did fluctuate... specifically that's indicative of the market conditions," said Bishop. "We were very lucky to get the IPO away."

Phil Bishop and Bernard Morgan take Celoxica to the City

Being a public company brings some significant benefits to the firm, explained Bernard Morgan, chief financial officer: "Immediately it increases our visibility, and will help to accelerate our sales cycle."

Private firms, especially those that don't yet make a profit, "inevitably get asked more questions", Morgan said. Being public gives more confidence to potential licensees of the firm's software tools. The flotation also stregthens the balance sheet, Morgan added.

Chris Sullivan, director of strategic alliances at the firm, pointed out: "The first ESL company to go public is UK-based."

Much of the product development will focus on intellectual property, wrapping up high value IP with the firm's C-to-hardware design software.

Resulting products will be similar to the firm's PixelStreams product, which includes IP for image processing. Bishop said other markets include financial, automotive, and high performance computing.

Investors in Celoxica include venture capital firms Advent, Cazenove and Quester and industry investors Intel Capital, Xilinx, Wind River and Creative, none of which are selling shares at the IPO.

The firm said sales last year totalled £3.4m, while the first six months of 2005 saw sales of £2.3m.

www.celoxica.com