T-Venture Leads Telecom Corporate Venture Arms With Most Portfolio Exits

Earlier, we highlighted that telecom corporate venture investments in 2013 are on pace for the highest level in more than 10 years. But because that deal growth has largely concentrated around several highly active firms, we also wanted to analyze which telecom corporate venture arms are spurring that deal growth, and which have realized the most portfolio exits?

With over 50 unique company investments since the start of 2009, Deutsche Telekom’s T-Venture tops the list of most active telecom corporate venture arms. Singtel Innov8 takes second and is followed by France Telecom’s Innovacom. A list of the top 10 most active telecom CVC arms is below.

Among the telecom CVCs analyzed (given at the end of this research brief), there have been 57 M&A or IPO exits since 2009 including eight in 2013 to date. Several recent large exits include the public offering of T-Venture and SingTel Innov8-backed Ruckus Wireless last year and Cadence Design Systems’ $380M acquisition of DoCoMo Capital-backed Tensilica. Exit activity by telecom CVC-backed firms hit a four-year high in 2012. At present, 2013 looks to be a slower year for CVC portfolio exits.

Given T-Venture prolific rate of investment, it is perhaps not surprising that the corporate venture arm has also recorded the highest number of exits among telecom CVCs since 2009. It is important to note, however, that the investments of a number of telecom CVC arms including SingTel Innov8, Telefonica Ventures and Orange-Publicis Fund have primarily come since 2012 and are thus too immature to evaluate fairly. Moreover, this ranking includes exits with valuations as low as $6M to as high as $1.1B which highlights the range of outcomes that are possible and that not all exits are good exits. Verizon Ventures and Innovacom round out the top 3 firms by number of portfolio exits.

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For reference, active telecom CVCs since 2008 included in this venture capital financing analysis are listed below:

• AT&T Ventures
• DoCoMo Capital
• NTT DoCoMo Ventures
• Innovacom
• Liberty Global Ventures
• KDDI Open Innovation Fund
• KDDI Mugen Labo
• Orange-Publicis Venture Fund
• STC Ventures
• T-Venture
• Optus Innov8
• SingTel Innov8
• SK Telecom Ventures
• Mona Lisa Capital
• SoftBank Ventures Korea
• Swisscom Ventures
• Telefonica Ventiures
• TeleVenture Management
• Telstra Applications and Ventures Group
• Telus Ventures
• Verizon Ventures

Data Integrity Note: Data featured in this analysis only looked at investments by telecom corporate venture arms, and not minority investments made by telecom corporations themselves. Both corporate venture and corporate minority investments are available as part of CB Insights venture capital database.