OCZ raises money and will shed non-core businesses

Posted on Friday, March 26 2010 @ 15:29 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
OCZ announced it has secured $15.45 million in funding in order to support its growing solid state disk business.
Through the transaction, OCZ sold 5,151,662 shares of its common stock (approximately $15.45 million in the aggregate) to several institutional investors. The transaction includes warrants to purchase an aggregate of an additional 2,575,831 shares of common stock. The warrants are immediately exercisable, have a term of five years and contain certain other features. Merriman Curhan Ford (NASDAQ:MERR) acted as the exclusive placement agent for the transaction.

“Over the course of the last few years, we have met the demand for a better storage option head-on, by delivering high performance solid state disk drives to a wide array of customer’s globally” said Ryan Petersen, President and Chief Executive Officer of OCZ Technology Group. “This round of funding will enable OCZ to continue its growth in SSDs and accelerate the development of next-generation solutions.”

Mr. Petersen further commented, “We believe that OCZ is well-positioned to advance the deployment of flash-based storage solutions. OCZ will continue to design, develop and implement SSD technology with its current base of over 300 customers while opening up new markets through targeting enterprise and OEM customers seeking to adopt flash media as primary storage.”

Mr. Petersen concluded, “We very much appreciate the efforts of Merriman who recognized the potential in our markets, understood the intrinsic value in OCZ and worked closely with us to bring this transaction to a successful conclusion.”
Over the years OCZ has dipped its feet into many new markets, but the company is doing a major overhaul to shed all non-core businesses. As reported over at X-bit Labs, the core businesses of OCZ are memory, solid state disks and power supply units. The company will cease to introduce new non-core products, including coolers, keyboards, mice, various gaming gear, PC systems, and all other products in order to focus onto the crucial parts of its operation.
“We are focusing on our key product categories. We have ceased sales and marketing of the Hypersonic brand […]. We have transitioned away from the coolers, systems and peripherals and allowing us to focus and direct resources to our core solutions which are SSDs, power supplies and memory,” said Alex Mei, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at OCZ Technology.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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