Venture capital portfolio company exits by initial public offerings fell 57% while exits by sales dropped 32% in the first quarter of this year from the year-earlier quarter, according to the Exit Poll report by the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters released Monday.
Venture capital firms took eight companies public, raising $672 million in IPOs in the first quarter, down 57% in the number of companies and 60% in the amount of capital raised from the first quarter of 2012. In the first quarter of last year, 19 venture-capital-backed companies launched IPOs raising a combined $1.7 billion.
Venture-capital-backed mergers and acquisitions declined to 77 sales in the first quarter from 114 a year earlier. Ten of the venture capital-backed companies sold in the first quarter disclosed a combined value of $984.3 million, down 73% from the 28 companies that reported a combined value of $3.7 billion in the first quarter of last year.
Six of the eight IPOs in the first quarter were information technology related companies: three, representing a combined value of $318 million, were computer software and services companies and three others, worth a total of $201 million, were Internet-specific companies. The largest IPO in the quarter was Model N, a Redwood City, Calif.-based revenue management provider for life science and technology industries, which raised $120 million on the New York Stock Exchange on March 19, according to the Exit Poll report.
