AXA Private Equity acquires a stake in Coronis Systems Paris, Thursday September 9, 2004

AXA Private Equity, via its Venture Capital structures, AXA Placement Innovation III and AXA Venture Fund IV, has invested € 1.7 million in the wireless company Coronis Systems, in conjunction with existing shareholder BANEXI Venture Partners. The total value of the capital increase is € 2.5 million.

Coronis Systems designs and supplies radio frequency (RF) systems and has already sold over 200,000 modules containing Wavenis, its ultra low power wireless technology for embedded devices (low data rate, long-range and ultra-low-powered). Coronis Systems has incorporated broadband-compatible communication functions (mainly Bluetooth oriented) into its products, enabling them to connect to the outside world (i.e. remote control) without requiring a specific infrastructure.

AXA Private Equity’s investment is motivated by the performance of the technologies developed by Coronis Systems and their pertinence to the targeted sectors. It is also based on the quality of the company’s initial commercial successes, particularly in France, as well as its international growth prospects (Europe, North America and Asia).

Pierre Boulic, Investment Manager at AXA Private Equity’s Venture Capital team, explains that “Coronis provides solutions offering an unrivalled compromise between price, reliability, range and energy consumption”.

Veolia, SAUR, Lyonnaise des eaux, CIS, EDF, France Telecom, Gaz de France, OTIO, Intervox, Wateau and Schneider Electric, amongst others, all already offer services using Coronis Systems solutions. The markets covered include metering (remote reading of water and energy meters, the group’s largest market), but also home automation in fields such as the protection of persons and property, home comfort (lighting, opening of doors and windows, etc.), home medical care and a wealth of automated industrial applications (sensors, monitoring, etc.)

Pierre Boulic says that “the cash will be used partly to expand and enhance the group’s international clientele and marketing efforts, via partnerships in Europe and a local foothold in the North American market, and partly to support R&D activities, particularly as regards strengthening the ties between Wavenis and Bluetooth”. In fact, Coronis plans to standardise its offer within SIG Bluetooth in order to improve its competitively in the broader market of “Wireless Sensors Networks”.

About Coronis Systems

Coronis is a supplier of innovative technological and global solutions, specialized in the development of ultra low power and long range capable wireless networks. The company has invested in design, development and industrialization in order to propose a complete service based on Wavenis RF ASIC in association with its dedicated communication protocol stack. These efforts have enabled the company to attain a very high level of performance and reliability at an extremely competitive price. Coronis continues to invest in R&D to consolidate its technological lead and competitiveness.
In addition to the ultra low power and long range features on which the success of Wavenis is based, this technology enables extension of the Bluetooth standard to embedded communicating devices. In parallel to its commercial activity, its goal is to achievestandardization of our wireless technology under the Bluetooth banner.
A proven industrial maturity with over 200,000 products installed and licenses accorded to leading industrial companies, Coronis has based its activity on the Business-to-Business (B-to-B) model with forecast sales of over 1 million Wavenis enabled products over the next 3 years. At present, the company has a workforce of 35 and the objective is to increase this figure to 50 with an annual turnover of € 15 million in 3 years and € 65 million in 5 years by focusing on 3 types of sales:

• products: autonomous modules and data recovery solutions
• sub-assemblies: Wavenis OEM wireless cards
• licenses: Wavenis RF ASIC + Wavenis stack protocol

Our clients include integrators active in sectors such as automatic meter reading, home comfort, alarm, protection of persons and property, home medical care, industrial & building automation, transport, cooling and refrigeration monitoring...

Located in Montpellier, France, Coronis was founded in 2000 and continues to focus on its international market development strategy targeting primarily the European and North American markets. The company is backed by the following financial and industrial partners: AXA Private Equity, BANEXI Ventures, ANVAR, Flamingo Ventures, Montpellier Agglomération, Région Languedoc Roussillon, Sofilaro and Soridec.