Welcome to the very first Monthly Funding Bulletin. At Techboard we have been compiling and releasing our data on a quarterly basis since 2017. In order to enable us to deliver our insights to the Ecosystem and data to our data customers more rapidly we have been planning for some time to move to monthly data collection and reporting. Well Covid19 has provided us with the impetus to start that to enable us to track how the pandemic is impacting upon startup and tech funding almost as it happens rather than with the three month delay.
The funding and investor data underlying this Bulletin is now available to Techboard's Commercial Subscribers.
General Overview
April funding was higher than the average for the March Q at a touch over $1b from 45 funding events, making it the highest level of monthly funding captured (excluding acquisitions). This increase over previous periods came surprisingly as a result of Covid 19, with the Commonwealth Government allocating Judo Bank with $500m of investment funding to help Judo loan money to small businesses impacted by Covid. This latest investment for Judo takes the total amount it has raised since September 2018 to over $1.4b. A number of other raises were influenced positively by the pandemic including Atomo Diagnostics and Micro-X.
Private funding in April set a monthly record at $890m but this was dominated by Judo Bank and Airwallex with a massive $254m raise, its third $100m+ raise in less than two years, taking the total amount it has raised to $511m. Similar to the March Q, most other funding types were down for the month, with Placements continuing their slide although IPOs were up from the 2019 monthly average thanks to the $30m IPO by Atomo Diagnostics.
Private funding
Downwards trends in private funding identified in our March Q report were largely continued into April. April recorded no investments in $10-$20m or $50-100m ranges. The level of investments in the $5-$10m range stayed steady from March to April while $20-$50m and >$100m deal investments increased. However the numbers of funding events captured during April was markedly lower than average. During 2019 we collected an average of 70 funding events per month. The number of funding events captured during the March quarter was 170, an average of roughly 57 per month with April lower, at 45. (We do expect to add funding events in both periods when we compile our funding report for the full 19/20 financial year).
This is illustrated in the following charts. Figure 1 illustrates the changes in number and size of private investments from 2019 to April. Figure 2 illustrates the shifts in the overall funding levels and shifts in the proportion of funding coming from sub $100m raises.
Fig. 1.
Fig 2.
Public Funding
April saw a low level of investment via public markets with only one eligible IPO raising $30m (Atomo Diagnostics) and four sizeable placements between $35m for Paradigm Biopharmaceuticals and $10m. The Atomo Diagnostics IPO put April up over 9% over the 2019 average for the amount raised by IPOs per month but placements were down over 40% on the 2019 average.
Analysis by State
Victoria was the most funded state with around 80% of funding for the month as both Judo and Airwallex are Melbourne-based. Companies in New South Wales took around 14% of funding. Of the smaller states, South Australia had the strongest month with large investments in satellite telecoms provider Myriota raising a private round of $28m and Imaging company Micro-X (ASX:MX1) raising $15m in a placement. There was one significant raise for a Western Australian company, with cyber safety company Familyzone (ASX:FZ0) raising a $10m placement. No significant funding events for Queensland, ACT, Northern Territory or Tasmanian companies were captured during April.
Analysis by Sector/Category
Fintech again dominated funding with 79% of all funding for the month of April. With significant raises by Judo Bank ($500m), AirWallex ($254m) and Neobank 86400 ($34m).
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