MyWave capital raise oversubscribed

Media Release - embargoed until midday 1 October 2015

MyWave capital raise oversubscribed - achieves $50 million valuation in two years

MyWave Holdings Limited – the high tech startup founded two years ago by New Zealander and former SAP North America CEO Geraldine McBride – has successfully over-subscribed a second round capital raise of NZ$4 million to support rapid offshore growth.

Geraldine McBride says the MyWave Board - chaired by former Xero chairman Phil Norman - resolved to seek new capital of NZ$4 million, with over subscriptions accepted up to NZ$5 million.

“We are delighted with the level of investor support and interest,” she says. “We quickly secured NZ$4.5 million at a pre-money valuation of NZ$50 million (NZ$3.45 per share) and have extended the close date until the end of October to allow due diligence and other details required by prospective investors. We expect to close off the capital raise at or close to the $5 million oversubscription limit.”

McBride says the capital raise includes a NZ$2.9 million personal investment by Andre Crawford-Brunt, global head of equities trading for Deutsche Bank. Most of the balance has come from existing shareholders increasing their investment position.

She says the increase in valuation to NZ$3.45 per share since MyWave completed its first round capital raise of NZ$2.5 million at NZ$0.50 per share in May 2014 reflects MyWave’s rapid progress in building a world-class intelligent personal assistant platform and its sales success with major brands in New Zealand and Australia.

“MyWave’s intelligent personal assistant, called Frank, has a strong leadership position in the rapidly emerging digital personal assistant market,” McBride says. “Gartner Group estimates that by 2016 more than US$2 billion of online shopping will be done by mobile personal assistants.”

She says that the first wave of enterprise customers will begin deploying a range of new services to their customers over the next six months.

First to be announced is New Zealand’s Saveawatt (www.saveawatt.co.nz), which early next year will go live with a world-first service using MyWave’s Frank to help householders find the best power price, switch to the best retail plan without filling in forms, and constantly check that the household has the best electricity deal..

Other customers, yet to be announced but in advanced pilot development, include major Australian and New Zealand brands in the retail, real estate and banking sectors.

McBride says the new capital will be used to further expand MyWave’s 30-strong Melbourne-based software development team, and appointments and partnerships to build sales and implementation resources in the USA and UK required to support new sales currently underway.

She says MyWave is already generating significant customer revenue and could have adopted a self-funding model. However, she says, the decision has been to invest for growth, which requires greater software development resources and setting up US and UK subsidiaries.

About MyWave

MyWave, was founded in 2013 by New Zealander Geraldine McBride, a former President of SAP North America and a current director of public companies including National Australia Bank, Sky Television and Fisher & Paykel Healthcare. MyWave puts a world-leading intelligent personal digital assistant – called Frank – in a consumer’s pocket, or on their tablet or desktop. Users own and control their personal data kept secure in MyWave’s personal cloud platform. See www.mywave.me

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