Riverdeep Interactive Learning has raised $15 million (€13.93 million) through a Davy Stockbrokers equity placement. Within a week the funds were pledged by leading Irish institutions, private Davy clients and international institutional investor, Credit Suisse First Boston.
The deal provides the educational software company's funding into next year and values it at $150 million on a post-funding, fully diluted basis. Last November, Riverdeep completed a similar £2 million (€2.5 million) equity investment round which valued the company at £25 million. The Dublin-based firm, which is a derivative of CBT Systems, is planning to float on both the Nasdaq and Dublin stock exchanges in the middle of next year.
Over the next three years Riverdeep hopes to achieve 100 per cent annual revenue growth. Projections for the coming 12 months include 10 per cent market share and estimates for fiscal 2000 of $15 million in revenues and one million paying subscribers.
Riverdeep develops and distributes curriculum-based educational software for the US public school market. The products are delivered on CD-ROM, Local Area Networks and over the Internet. Children use the animated multimedia software to learn maths and science subjects while teachers use it to assess students' retention levels and to deliver homework.
Riverdeep recently acquired the educational assets of a smaller company specialising in delivering software through the Internet. The purchase of Israeli company Logal Educational Software is seen as the key to increasing the firm's Internet delivery capability.
