Virata Corporation - Preparing For IPO

Preparing For IPO

On August 31, 1999 the company was incorporated in Delaware as Virata Corporation and the company headquarters became Bunker Hill Lane, Santa Clara, California 95054.

On September 3, 1999 the corporation filed a Form S-1 to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It embarked thereafter on an Initial Public Offering (IPO) that culminated on November 17, 1999 when Virata offered 5 million shares at $14 on the NASDAQ exchange. The company ticker was "VRTA". The IPO raised $81 million and on the first day the price increased from $14 to $27 per share. On March 21, 2000, the Board of Directors approved a two-for-one split of Virata's common stock.

The VRTA share price continued to grow and on July 14, 2000 Virata completed a secondary offering of 6.5 million shares of common stock with each share valued at $71. The secondary offering raised $531 million and was extremely significant in providing Virata with funding for subsequent events. Together with the five private funding rounds that preceded, the company had now undergone a total of 7 funding rounds raising $683 million in total.

A period of intense company acquisition began in February 2000 with the acquisition of D2 Technologies, Inc. CA. This was followed in April with the acquisition of Inverness Systems Ltd Israel and in August with Agranat Systems, Inc. MA and Excess Bandwidth Corporation CA.

Virata now had operations in Santa Clara, Raleigh, Cambridge, Santa Barbara, Kfar Saba, Maynard, and Taipei as well as a number of sales offices. The company also became an investor - in November 2000 for example Virata joined with Intel, ARM, and others to invest in Bluetooth chip maker Cambridge Silicon Radio.

Virata was voted “Business of the Year” in the Business Weekly East of England Business Awards 2000.