Pulse Data plans sharemarket listing

Investors should get a chance next year to buy into Christchurch technology company Pulse Data International.

The company makes electronics products for blind and visually impaired people. Pulse Data's flagship product is the BrailleNote, a laptop computer fitted with a Braille keyboard. It enables blind people to use the internet.

Russell Smith, a former University of Canterbury electronics engineering lecturer, has led the company since it was formed in a management buyout from Wormald Sensory Aids.

The company planned to list next year, he said.

Over the last year, the company has gone to shareholders three times for capital, or brought in new shareholders.

It now wants to raise "larger chunks" of equity to buy other companies.

The owners - the original management team still controls more than half the company - also want liquidity for their shares. Some are close to retirement age. A Stock Exchange listing would allow them to sell when they wanted, as well as facilitate capital raising for the company.

"We have another acquisition in the United States we are within a couple of weeks of announcing. We are in a pretty strong growth phase," Smith said.

Revenue has doubled over the last two years and is expected to reach $40 million this year.

In other news, the company has appointed new directors Tim Robinson (director of investment banking and co-head of mergers and acquisitions for Credit Suisse First Boston NZ) and

Chris Laurie (chief executive of Christchurch City-controlled Orion New Zealand which has taken a stake in Pulse Data).

Board member Alan Townsend, chief executive of Trimble Navigation NZ in Christchurch, is retiring after four years, because of increasing overseas responsibilities with Trimble.

Pulse Data said it was continuing to collaborate with Microsoft on the BrailleNote computer.

The company demonstrated a web browser at an American conference in March. The browser captures the text in web pages so a blind user can read it with fingertips or hear it read out by a text to speech synthesiser.

Pulse has also introduced a version using GPS, which is designed to help blind people find their way to favourite places, such as restaurants.

Next week it will release a BrailleNote version for people working in French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

While Pulse Data's computers for blind people attract most attention, low-vision products potentially have a much larger market.

These allow people with very poor eyesight to read with special magnifiers. Over the last 12 months Pulse Data has introduced five new models in its low-vision range.

The company is also well into a two-year project to develop a new type of reading device which it hopes will revolutionise magnification for people with low vision.

Pulse Data said it was extending marketing to European countries that have not been sources of significant sales before.

A recent merger of the company's US operations would also enable it to grow strongly in North America, its biggest market.

The company employs 60 people in the US. Its headquarters has been consolidated in San Francisco over the last three months. It also employs about 60 people in Christchurch, its manufacturing base.

- NZPA