Acme Packet boosts IPO range for tomorrow

Acme Packet, a company that provides session border controllers that enable interactive communications such as VoIP, has actually raised its terms for its proposed IPO set for pricing tonight.

The new proposed range is $8.00 to $9.00, up from $6.50-$7.50, so it may have an implied market cap of some $550 million. Underwriters in the deal are Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, J.P.Morgan and ThinkEquity.

The company has not specified plans for the money other than general corporate purposes such as acquisitions, capital expenditures and investments. Acme was founded in 2000 and it developed the Net-Net family of SBCs and started shipping in the second half of 2002. It lists Alcatel, Nokia, UTStarcom and Ercisson as its larger partners.

Acme began its sales cycle in 2003 and sales reached $36 million last year, essentially breaking even on earnings. In the first half of this year, revenue more than doubled over the prior year to $38 million and it posted an EPS equivalent on a pre-IPO basis of $0.21. Sprint and Time Warner Cable were the two largest customers, and 3 of its 200+ customers account for some 38% of revenues.

It doesn't look like any ties to VoIP have been tainted by Vonage (VG) as far as being an equipment supplier, maybe because Cbeyond (CBEY) has continued to perform so well since its IPO. The company managed to get here on only $45 million of total venture capital funding raised from Menlo Ventures, Canaan Partners, Advanced Technology Ventures, and Beachhead Capital.

Acme Packet has been assigned the ticker "APKT."

Jon Ogg is a partner in 24/7 Wall St., LLC; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.