TRENDIT’S IPO SET TO DRIVE GROWTH IN $1.5 TRILLION ‘SMART CITIES’ MARKET

The announcement by Trendit, an Israeli-registered provider of cutting-edge technology for real-time monitoring of crowd behavior, population movement and trend analytics, to raise £4 million (c.$6m) imminently through a new share offering on the London Stock Exchange ’s main market could pave the way for an “exit at some stage” over the next few years. It chose London over New York to list as a result of strong investor interest in data analytics firms and the UK’s handy international time zone.

Well, this is the exit game plan if – as Trendit’s board maintains in a weighty 182-page listing prospectus to their IPO – the Tel Aviv-based firm can successfully execute their business strategy and exploit opportunities in the growing Data and Analytics marketing systems market.

This market is one that is forecast to be worth an estimated $11.6 billion (bn) by 2018 according to leading IT research firm Gartner IT -1.11% Group. But let’s not forget the Big Data Analytics market too, which is set to experience robust growth according to IDC over the next five years and had been expected to reach a whopping $125bn by 2015.

Trendit’s listing follows two others Israeli tech companies on the LSE’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) earlier in 2015. TechFinancials Inc. listed in March raising £3.05m with its core product being a binary options trading platform offering, and Adgorithms, which operates in the high-growth online advertising market that raised £27m in June.

The ‘Smart City’ market, which covers energy, transportation, healthcare, building, infrastructure, and governance segments, has been estimated to be worth a cumulative $1.565 trillion (trn) by 2020 according to a Frost & Sullivan report. Another report from MarketsandMarkets has predicted that the global Smart Cities market would witnessed a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 22.5% over the period 2014-2019.

Looking at the gross domestic product (GDP) of nations globally in 2014, this figure would place the market for Smart Cities – of which over 26 are anticipated by 2025 according to Frost & Sullivan – above that of Spain’s GDP – the 12th largest globally. So, hardly a number to turn your nose up at. And, by that latter date it’s anticipated that c.58% or 4.6bn people of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. (Note: Around 50% of these cities will be in Europe (e.g. including Amsterdam, Barcelona and Stockholm) and North America by that point in time).

Until recently Smart Cities were hard to define. But a team at Frost & Sullivan put their collective thinking caps on and published their thoughts in a study titled ‘Strategic Opportunity Analysis of the Global Smart City Market’ (2013).