Alphawave IP: IPO Success Story

It may sound like a relatively short journey, but for the founders it’s been a 25 year one. We have been focused on this space for more than two decades across multiple companies. When Tony and I founded this company, we set out to do something bigger than anything we'd ever done before. The growth we've seen in this business is unprecedented but it’s that experience that has propelled us so quickly. Alphawave IP’s technology has revolutionised the way computer chips communicate. - John Lofton Holt

Our goal was five years to IPO. Like most things we do, we pulled it forward a year! - Tony Pialis

We are the world leader and we are ahead of our competition by years. Not only do we want to maintain that, we want to extend that leadership – which requires capital.

We have huge customers who are betting multi-billion-dollar chip projects on our technology. It’s one thing to say to them that we are a privately-owned Canadian company; it's very different to say that we are a public company, listed on London Stock Exchange and one of the world's biggest IP companies.

Another strong reason is that attracting and retaining talent is so much easier for a public company than a private one. - Tony Pialis

This was the subject of a spirited but short debate.

If you’re an entrepreneur and grow up in business, you dream of ringing the bell at New York Stock Exchange. But we took the emotion out of our decision. We looked at Toronto and New York and we made the decision on London very quickly.

Our business is silicon IP. Both the industry and the business model were born in the UK. Great British companies like ARM and Imagination were formed and have scaled and listed in the UK. Investors recognise that. We have met hundreds of investors on our roadshow and about half have been British investors. BlackRock and Janus Henderson have come in as cornerstone investors. The cornerstone process is a fantastic one that we could not have done by listing elsewhere; it provides a lot of validation to the wider investor market and is reflected in the global capital flows that have been attracted to our listing. 

We are continuing to scale up, not just to maintain our market leadership but to extend it. We are expanding our footprint in Asia and we are expanding the types of solutions that we offer.

Our greatest resource is our people and as we expand into new products, we need to build up our workforce of world leading semiconductor engineers. The IPO will accelerate and broaden the work that we do, giving our engineers the incentive of even more exciting work.

Our employees are excited about owning shares in a privately held company but they are ecstatic about owning shares in a fast-growing publicly traded company. It gives us a more measurable equity value for our employees, which further helps our ability to retain and recruit.

We have never had a dual-class share structure. Tony and I have wanted everyone to be treated the same in each company that we have been involved in as founders. We are all in this together. The founders, our first employees and our future employees – and now our investors – have a common alignment of interest. From a governance perspective, our investors have been thrilled about this decision. - John Lofton Holt

We are a global company with customers in North America, EMEA and Asia and we have been very successful in building that customer base from Canada. Moving forward, London is the perfect location to expand that customer base.

We are establishing our corporate headquarters in London but we will maintain and continue to grow our Toronto R&D capabilities and establish our new R&D headquarters in Cambridge, UK.

We have scaled from zero to 97 employees and have a great track record of attracting and retaining talent. We're scaling as quickly as possible and we're doing it in all of the regions that have the talent that allows us to scale. The UK offers a great place to expand globally and Cambridge has an unparalleled market for talent in our space.

I deal with customers every day. The IPO is hugely beneficial. Since we've announced our intention to float, our customers have all reached out to congratulate us. And these are top-tier semiconductor companies. It gives them reassurance, lowers their perceived risk and raises our profile – it’s a huge help to our business and its next stages of growth. - Tony Pialis