This article was originally published by RFID Update.
January 30, 2007—Applied Digital Solutions announced yesterday that it will take VeriChip public. Applied Digital manufactures security and identification products based on a number of technologies, including RFID. A subsidiary of Applied Digital, VeriChip manufactures the controversial human-implantable RFID tag of the same name.
Applied Digital stated that 4.3 million shares of stock will be offered, with the offering price per share ranging from $6.50 to $8.50. At those prices, the total proceeds yielded from the offering could range from $27.95 to $36.55 million. Merriman Curhan Ford & Co., C.E. Unterberg, Towbin, and Kaufman Bros., L.P. are underwriting the IPO and will have an option to purchase up to 645,000 shares of the stock to cover over-allotments.
VeriChip will trade under the ticker symbol CHIP on the Nasdaq Global Market exchange. The company is aiming for next Thursday, February 8th, as the day it will go public.
VeriChip has long been a lightning rod for the RFID industry. Its flagship product — a rice grain-sized RFID tag encapsulated in transparent glass — raises the ire of privacy advocates, who easily imagine all manner of nefarious, people-tracking applications for the technology. Their suspicions have been fueled by statements from the company itself, most notably when CEO Scott Silverman argued on the Fox News Channel that implanting microchips in immigrants to the United States could be a viable solution to the immigration issue (see Two Victories for the Anti-RFID Crowd).
Despite the perceptions of privacy advocates, those within the RFID industry itself typically do not see VeriChip as “one of them” but rather as a fringe company with an unusal offering that happens to be based on RFID technology. Furthermore, VeriChip targets non-traditional areas in which most RFID companies do not compete, like patient identification, infant protection, and wander prevention. It will be interesting to see which solutions generate the most revenue for VeriChip when the company’s financials are made public.
Read the announcement from Applied Digital