Upek, the three year-old STMicroelectronics spin-off specialising in fingerprint sensors, is preparing to IPO after substantial revenue growth.
The company, which had $8.9m revenues in 2004, the year it was founded as a separate division by ST, shot to $30m in 2005, and to $53m last year. ST sold its interest in 2005.
The IPO is expected to raise $86m which will be used to pay down accumulated deficits of $35m, and give Upek greater credibility with customers, which are currently a limited group. Lenovo accounted for over 60 per cent of Upek’s revenues in 2005.
Most of the market is for laptop security, with the sensors used in Lenovo, Sony and Toshiba laptops to authenticate the owner’s fingerprint to permit access.
SanDisk has a flash drive which uses a Upek sensor, and the sensor has been used as a mouse-pad o play games on a cell-phone.
Upek CEO Alan Kramer is pursuing new applications in areas such as keyless entry to cars, e-commerce, front door access to homes etc.
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