PhillyDeals: Banking on U.S. demand for a new computer
Fred Allegrezza, who has built and sold video-software companies to Motorola and DivX, among others, is betting his profits that Americans need another brand of personal computer.
Fred Allegrezza, who has built and sold video-software companies to Motorola and DivX, among others, is betting his profits that Americans need another brand of personal computer.
His new Chalfont firm, Telikin, is rolling out the first of its Linux-based, crash-resistant, kitchen-proof, touch-screen-keyboard, competitively priced machines. They are pitched to millions of potential users who want to cruise Facebook and Gmail and share photos and instant messaging, and are available at eight Clear smart phone stores and other locations in the Philadelphia area, starting this week.
"We started out designing a computer for senior citizens. We've made it simpler, and easier to use. And we've found that has a wider appeal," the Upper Dublin native, a Drexel-trained electrical engineer, told me.
"Microsoft Windows 7 has become a very complex operating system, supporting everything from accounting systems to designing jets. We developed this computer based on Linux, which runs on a majority of computers, and simplified it."
Allegrezza set "aggressive" targets of 2,000 sales a month in the Philadelphia area this winter, and one million nationally per year by 2012 after he introduces it at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.
Telikin employs 18, and expects to double that by the end of next year at its Chalfont office, where staffers write software, load it into Taiwanese-built flat-screen PCs (laptops are on the way), and ship them.
College students, business owners, movie editors and engineering designers will want more sophisticated computers, but Allegrezza says his $700 system, with up-to-date processing and memory along with printing and other basic functions, is competitive for millions of home-users.
Allegrezza and past business partners Cliff Lewis and Tim Court have paid development costs so far. Allegrezza is trying to raise a few million dollars to fund expansion.
"Fred's a very methodical, can-do type of engineer," says Rob Adams, cofounder of Philadelphia's NextStage Capital and a past investor in Allegrezza's AnySource Media, sold to DivX of San Diego last year. "He's very pragmatic. He's very good at attracting engineers and entrepreneurs to work with him. We're taking a look at his company."
Or will Telikin sell out, if it catches on? "We do see the option for a large computer manufacturer selling a version with our software and application system," Allegrezza told me.
Deal recovery: I
GF Data Resources, of Philadelphia, says third-quarter sales of U.S. firms to new owners, at prices in the $10 million to $250 million range, were the busiest since the markets collapsed in 2007.
The firm counted 33 sales at more than 150 buyout firms it tracks, up from 20 in Quarter 3 2009, but still not up to the average 50 per quarter in late 2006 to early 2007.
Prices are back up to six times past earnings (before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), up from around five times for the previous year.
It's still stop-and-go: Winter deal flow is typically weaker than the rest of the year, and "we are hearing from the most-active private-equity groups and investment banks that they're not seeing a lot of new product right now," GF co-owner Andy Greenberg told me. He's projecting a fuller recovery in late 2011.
Deal recovery: II
Berkadia Commercial Mortgage, the Horsham-based commercial-finance company bought by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Leucadia National Corp. from General Motors' finance affiliate last year, has started offering commercial-property buyers fixed-rate loans for inclusion in the new generation of commercial mortgage-backed securities, as the market restarts following its 2007-08 collapse. (Berkadia employs nearly 1,000, about a third of them in Horsham.)
Joseph Franzetti, formerly of Cohen Financial, of Chicago, will run Berkadia's CMBS unit from his New York office. "We view this as a nascent recovery, not near the roaring days we had pre-2007," Franzetti told me.
This doesn't mean real estate prices are going back up, or even stabilizing. "The availability of capital is a good thing. It allows transactions to happen," Franzetti told me. "For properties that have sufficient cash flow, it's a good time to lend."