Menire Oyj Release August 14, 2001
Menire's portfolio company Hantro Products has signed an agreement with 2M Invest, Nexit Ventures and Menire that guarantees EUR 3,488,610 of Hantro's on-going financing round. Half of the commitment, EUR 1,744,305 has been closed on August 9 by Nexit Ventures and 2M Invest. Menire has the right to participate in the second tranche, to be closed on October 31.
As part of the agreement, Menire and Nexit Ventures are able to convert their outstanding convertible loans to Hantro, EUR 1,000,000 each. After this financing round Menire's ownership of Hantro will be between 10% and 23.4% depending on how other investors participate in the round and whether Menire uses it option to invest at the October 31st closing.
Hantro Products has developed a hardware-based video coding and encoding solution that gives better performance both in terms of picture quality and power consumption than competing solutions. Also, most competitors focus on streaming video and not on the encoding, i.e. sending video.
Hantro's product is a System-on-Chip design and its revenues will be based on both design start fees and intellectual property royalties. Hantro has three patents pending.
All the major vendors of mobile terminals are planning to introduce video-enabled devices by 2003 or 2004 and are currently actively evaluating the enabling technologies.
Menire Corporation
Peter Seligson
Managing Director
Additional information: Peter Seligson, Managing Director,
Tel. +358 50-1493, e-mail: peter.seligson@menire.com, www.menire.com