Advent floats Citel

Advent Venture Partners is celebrating the listing of its fourth portfolio company on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) since last October. Citel Technologies (Citel) is raising £8.2m on listing. Other Advent companies to have floated recently are Southampton Photonics (SPIL), Celoxica (CXA) and Phoqus (PQS). Advent will retain an undisclosed stake in Citel and has not disclosed the return on its investment.

Advent originally invested in Citel for an undisclosed sum in August 1998 and has supported the company through several financing rounds. Citel designs, develops and markets a range of products for the business Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony market. Citel’s products enable businesses economically to migrate their telephone systems from the traditional voice network to VoIP, without replacing handsets and existing wiring infrastructure, effectively lowering the cost to the business of switching to VoIP.