Imarda acquires Telematics hardware specialist, Prolificx, in deal worth $7.59 million

20 July 2007

Telematics specialist, Imarda, announced today that it has acquired New Zealand telematics hardware company, Prolificx, in a stock-swap deal that values Prolificx at AUD $7.59 million. The Prolificx deal comes hot on the heels of Imarda's recent acquisition of Australian company SmartTrack, completed earlier this month.

Prolificx, established in 2001, designs and manufactures high-end in-vehicle communications, location tracking and computing platforms with over 35,000 units already deployed in fleets around the world, including the Bell Canada fleet and many other wellknown

companies operating in the freight and telecommunications industries. Prolificx also supplies devices to customers through its partnership with the telematics division of Oracle. Prolificx platforms are used in a variety of telematics segments including emergency response vehicles, vehicle fleet tracking and management, security of delivery logistics operators, and fixed asset monitoring and management.

Imarda's Executive Chairman, Selwyn Pellett, says the Prolificx acquisition is part of Imarda's ongoing strategy to acquire world-leading telematics companies but stresses that the acquisition by Imarda won’t change the strategy for Prolificx at all. “We have no intention of changing anything with Prolificx. They have already proven they are market leaders and all we want to do is support their current strategy”.

Evelyn Seewald, CEO of Prolificx, says “the acquisition by Imarda is fantastic from a working capital perspective as it allows us to expand our current team with confidence to meet this rapidly growing market and will ultimately deliver a lot of new customers.”

The acquisition of Prolificx is a particularly strategic one for Imarda according to Pellett. “Prolificx offers a hardware platform that will enable us to take all our current and future acquisitions global and scale them profitably. The growth of the telematics industry to date has been held back by the proprietary nature of the devices that hardware manufacturers have been producing - they’re hard to develop against, difficult to support, and not flexible enough to serve the needs of the market.”

Pellett says the Prolificx hardware platforms are the only products he’s seen globally that come standard with both Satellite and either GSM or CDMA capability, can access vehicle engine management data via automotive standard interfaces, are certified to FCC, e-Mark and A-Tick standards, are RoHS compliant and operate on the latest Windows Mobile architecture

“Prolificx has produced the Telematics equivalent of the mobile PC with all its associated benefits of simplicity, standardisation and flexibility”, he says.

Seewald says Prolificx has developed a deep understanding of what the market needs from working with an innovative and demanding group of global customers. The platforms Prolificx has developed as a result of this experience provide Prolificx customers with significant competitive advantages, she says.

ABOUT IMARDA
Imarda Ltd, incorporated in Australia on 25th May, 2007 has been formed by a group of private investors to provide oversight and management of best-of-breed Telematics companies.

ABOUT PROLIFICX
Prolificx, founded in 2001, designs and manufactures hardware devices that are used to track and manage mobile assets and provide mobile communications. It also provides specialised consulting and design-to-order manufacturing to both end-user and OEM partners. Prolificx has established a strong reputation in the telematics hardware industry, recognised through its strategic relationship with partners such as Oracle, Intel and Microsoft. Prolificx is the preferred supplier of choice for telematics hardware to the Oracle telematics business unit and has clients including Bell Canada, Konaware (a large US-based M2M software provider) and many others.

CONTACT

Selwyn Pellett
Executive Chairman Imarda Ltd
Mobile: +64-21-757 001
Email : selwyn.pellett@imarda.com.au

Claire Mitchell
CFO and COO Imarda Ltd
Phone: + 61 7 557 26232
Mobile: + 61 4 488 01668
Email: claire.mitchell@imarda.com.au