First exit in 2007: Amdocs buying SigValue for $54 million

It's the first exit in 2007: billing & customer-care software giant Amdocs (NYSE: DOX) is buying the Israeli real-time cellular billing and messaging applications startup SigValue Technologies for $54 million.

Amdocs already owned 14% of SigValue: the transaction brings Amdocs all the rest of its share capital.

The exit is a terrific one for SigValue's investors: according to IVC Online, the startup has received about $9 million in backing. That means investors will be getting back nine times their investment.

The venture capital funds AIG Orion and Holland Venture each placed $3.5 million into SigValue. Amdocs itself, the buyer, put in $2 million in SigValue's second financing round, which brought the startup $7 million at a company value of just $19 million.

SigValue was founded in 2000 by Eli Yardeni, formerly the switching and new technologies manager at Pelephone Communications, and Yuval Mayron, manager of applications and new technologies also at Pelephone, and now SigValue's chief technology officer. Yardeni handles sales at the startup.

SigValue explains that its platform aims at phone companies in emerging markets, where the telecommunications customer base consists mainly of mobile pre-paid subscribers. 

"Pre-paid subscribers represent the majority of customers in the emerging markets, which are also characterized by relatively low levels of average revenue per user," said Adam Feit, chief executive officer of SigValue.  "We believe SigValue?s light-weight, tightly-packaged, high-performance software platform will help Amdocs enable service providers in emerging markets to keep costs of operations low, while supporting rapid growth."

Eyal Levy, today managing partner at Orion and in the pat, chief executive of Pelephone, helped found the company.

Insofar as is known, Yardeni, Mayron and the startup's workers will be making $10 million combined from the sale to Amdocs.

SigValue's technology solves the problem of billing prepaid customers for use of added-value services such as SMS messaging and purchases via cellular Internet. The company also offers solutions for post-paid. Its sales passed $10 million in 2006.

Amdocs today has 150 communications companies on its client list, including vendors of regular phone services, cellular, cable TV, satellite and Internet. This is the second Israeli company's it's known to have bought, the first being XACCT, which it got for $29.5 million after the startup abandoned its dream at a Nasdaq floatation at a far, far higher valuation. Its revenues in 2006 reached $2.48 billion.