7th Dec 2005 08:00
Cyan Holdings Plc07 December 2005 Press Release 7 December 2005 Cyan Holdings plc ("Cyan" or "the Company") Cyan joins AIM First day of dealings on AIM Cyan Holdings plc, the fabless semiconductor company specialising in thedevelopment of low powered, configurable microcontroller chips, today announcesAdmission and commencement of dealings of its Ordinary shares on AIM. CollinsStewart is acting as Nominated Adviser and Broker to Cyan. The stock market EPICis CYAN.L Placing StatisticsPlacing Price 22pNumber of Ordinary Shares in issue immediately prior to the Placing 62,458,476Number of Placing Shares being issued* 21,852,273Estimated net proceeds of the Placing receivable by the Company** 3.25 millionNumber of Ordinary Shares in issue following the Placing 84,310,749Percentage of the enlarged ordinary issued share capital available in the Placing 26 per cent.Market capitalisation at the Placing Price 18.5 millionISIN Code GB00B0P66Q02EPIC CYAN.L * Includes 3,701,990 new Ordinary Shares issued pursuant to the exercise ofWarrants and placed by the Company on behalf of Warrant holders to satisfy thewarrant exercise price. ** Excludes the proceeds of the placing of those Placing Shares placed by theCompany on behalf of the Warrant holders to satisfy the warrant exercise price. Details of the Placing Cyan is intending to use the monies raised to support the development and launchof new products, the funding of the expanding sales and product support teams,and the working capital requirements of the subsequent sales growth. Inaddition the AIM admission will raise the corporate profile of Cyan and as suchfurther increase customer confidence. Paul Johnson, Chief Executive Officer of Cyan, commented: "We are delighted tosee the successful start of dealings in Cyan shares on AIM. The listingprovides us with a firm launching pad to take the Company on to its next stage.Having achieved a number of design wins for the first product, AIM shouldprovide Cyan with the opportunity to expand its product range and exploit thehigh-growth semiconductor market in which it operates. We believe thecombination of our ultra low power flexible microcontrollers and our softwaredevelopment toolkit sets Cyan apart. "Cyan has pioneered the idea of the integrated development process of softwaresupport tools in conjunction with the design of the microcontroller. The resultis a software development tool, CyanIDE(R), which automatically writes thedifficult but necessary configuration software, perfectly matched to the productrange it supports. "Cyan is a fabless semiconductor company meaning that chip manufacture,assembly, testing and shipping is completely outsourced, eliminating the needfor manufacturing capital costs. Therefore we can enjoy very low capitalintensity." Paul Johnson, the founding director and CEO of Cyan, gained a Ph.D inElectronics from Bradford University. His industrial career started atCambridge Consultants Limited where he primarily worked on high-speed analogueto digital converters, sonar and imaging systems. Paul went on to found one ofthe first Cambridge companies involved in personal computing in the early 1980s. Paul Johnson is joined on the executive team by Paul Barwick as Sales Directorand Andy Lee as Financial Director. Dr John Read joins Cyan Technology as non-executive. John brings a wealth ofexperience to Cyan, with a career spanning 30 years in the semiconductorindustry. He began as Director of Engineering in 1973 with US-based HoneywellSolid State Centre and has since held senior positions at Texas Instruments, STCTelecommunications, Marconi and latterly as Joint President at GPS PlesseySemiconductors. Professor Mike Hughes, Chairman of Cyan, previously of GEC and CEO of MidlandsElectricity PLC, commented on John's appointment: "I am extremely pleased towelcome Dr John Read to the Board. He has considerable experience in thesemiconductor industry, start-ups and PLCs which will be invaluable to ourstrategy. I am very impressed in general with the expertise and capability ofPaul Johnson's team." For further information: Cyan Holdings plcPaul Johnson, Chief Executive Officer Tel: +44 (0) 1954 234 400 www.cyantechnology.com Collins Stewart LimitedStephen Keys, Corporate Finance Tel: +44 (0) 20 7523 8312 www.collins-stewart.com Media enquiries:Abchurch CommunicationsHeather Salmond / Tania Wild Tel: +44 (0) 20 7398 [email protected] www.abchurch-group.com - Ends - Notes to Editor: Cyan is an electronics company which specialises in the design, sale and supportof a range of 16-bit and 32-bit general-purpose low power microcontroller chips("MCUs"). These chips are integral components used in nearly all electronicproducts, ranging from mobile phones and washing machines to toys, televisionsand motorcars. Consumer entertainment markets require more powerful processorsand are usually based on 32-bit chips which Cyan is developing to serve thismarket segment. Cyan is based in Cambridge, UK and, since it operates in aworldwide market for microcontrollers, has identified Europe and South East Asiaas the largest markets for its products. As such, Cyan opened a sales andtechnical support office in Hong Kong in May 2005. Originally Cyan was a spin out from Cambridge Consultants Limited to use its16-bit core, the same core used in CSR's first Bluetooth chips. Since Cyan wasfounded in 2002, it has achieved 75 design wins for its initial eCOG1(R)kproduct and is expanding the range of the patent-protected eCOG1(R) family andintroducing a new range of 32 bit microcontrollers. Cyan has introduced design integration support software, CyanIDE(R), to supportthe Company's entire range of current and future microcontrollers. The softwaremakes chip integration into customers' products vastly more simple, quick,reliable and hence less expensive while dramatically reducing development time. Cyan created CyanIDE(R) to avoid relying on standard tools from third partysuppliers. The South East Asian and Chinese markets are becoming increasingly important forlow cost manufacturing. It is also the case that technology design activity isincreasing at a rapid rate. Cyan Asia, which was established in May 2005, isbased in Hong Kong with a general manager and technical support staff to servicethe South East Asia market. Cyan is already shipping quantities of its eCOG1 toa customer based in China and Taiwan. Two country managers and a technicalsupport team support the European market from Cyan's Cambridge offices and Cyanis already in the process of shipping quantities of eCOG1 to four Europeancustomers. Microcontroller chips are general-purpose digital semiconductors used in almostall electronic products. The first microcontrollers handled 4-bit and 8-bitwords and were generally used to carry out control and signal processingfunctions, providing products with 'intelligent' behaviour. These were appliedin diverse industrial control applications, calculators and in domesticappliances. However, as technology advanced, 4-bit and 8-bit microcontrollerdesigns were not powerful enough to support the new and increasing amount ofcommunication protocols required. During the 1980s, more powerful 16-bit chips were first applied to officeimaging products such as fax machines, copiers and scanners, and automotiveengine management and diverse industrial control applications. Consumerentertainment markets now require more powerful processors and are increasinglybased on 32-bit chips which have been developed to serve this market segment. Inapplications such as digital communications products, where the productspecifications may change frequently, manufacturers prefer to use amicrocontroller equipped with a program memory that can be altered at a latestage in production or even after the point of sale, yet will retain the programeven with the power switched off. Microcontrollers built with embedded 'flashmemory' offer this characteristic and attract higher prices. The market for semiconductors is competitive and often the decision as to whichMCU to use in a product is taken by a customer's design engineer who will haveregard to both hardware and software issues. There are a variety of criteriaupon which the customer will make its decision, including the cost of materials,cost of manufacturing and time to market. For some applications there may alsobe a "power budget", with the finished product not to consume more than acertain amount of power due to either heat or cooling problems or to batterylife or to minimise the cost of the power supplies for the complete product. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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