(By Balachander) IWatt Inc., a California-based maker of power management integrated circuits (ICs), has filed to raise up to $75 million in an initial public offering.
The filing with the U.S. federal regulators did not disclose how many shares the company plans to offer or the pricing terms.
The company's chips are used by companies including Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Cree Inc. (NASDAQ: CREE), Konka Group and Royal Philips Electronics.
IWatt, which plans to list on the NASDAQ under the symbol IWAT, is backed by Horizon Ventures, Vantage Point Capital Partners and Sigma Partners, among others.
IWatt has shipped more than one billion power management ICs since 2007, including more than 400 million ICs in 2011, according to the regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company's revenue was $50.4 million in 2011, up from $18.6 million in 2009.
The company - founded in 1999 - said sales to Flextronics (NASDAQ: FLEX) and Foxlink, the original design manufacturers that incorporate its chips into products for Apple, in aggregate represented 18 percent of its total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2011.
IWatt said it increased the number of total customers and the volume of sales generated from a limited number of customers during fiscal year 2011 and the first quarter of 2012. The company expects that trend to continue as the markets for its products develop.
"We believe our current cash, along with net cash provided by operating activities, will be sufficient to satisfy our liquidity requirements for at least the next 12 months," IWatt said. "Our liquidity may be negatively impacted as a result of a decline in sales of our products due to a decline in our end markets, decrease in sales of our customers' products in the market, or adoption of competitors' products."
Deutsche Bank Securities and Barclays are the joint bookrunners to the offerings.