Microsoft partner LiveTiles goes public in $57m float

Microsoft partner LiveTiles has commenced trading on the Australian Securities Exchange with an initial market capitalisation of $57 million.

LiveTiles will trade under the ASX code LVT, with share prices opening at 21 cents per share.

The company’s flagship product is a user interface tool for creating tiled interfaces for Sharepoint and Azure implementations with more than 3.7 million users as of 2014.

LiveTiles has 86 reseller partners globally, and has signed on such customers as Pepsico, the Canadian Olympic Committee and Europe’s governing body for soccer UEFA.

While the LiveTiles headquarters is in New York, the company’s history lies in the Australian IT channel.

LiveTiles secured the public listing through a reverse buyout by ASX-listed West Australian mining company Modun Resources in April, which valued LiveTiles at $33.75 million.

Modun then changed its name to LiveTiles and announced plans to re-list on the ASX by July.

Local distributor Rhipe, previously NewLease, invested $2.5 million in LiveTiles in December last year, purchasing a 12.5 percent stake in the company. Rhipe also gained the rights to bundle LiveTiles solutions with Office 365 via Its 1,500 partner channel.

It followed Rhipe's acquisition of nSynergy, the Microsoft reseller that developed LiveTiles and spun it off as a separate company.

LiveTiles chief executive Karl Redenbach thanked investors in customers in a blog post and announced future growth plans for the company.

“Moving forward, we have aggressive growth plans for each LiveTiles product, with some exciting new concepts under development,” said Redenbach. “This includes broader integration with the Office 365 platform and beyond, LiveTiles Azure and portals for customer and partner ideation and support.

“Having been through three successful product upgrades already in nine months, the LiveTiles Design tool has some important updates in the pipe for October. Our free education solution, LiveTiles Mosaic, which has been deployed in almost 30 countries, will also be getting an update, and last week the product team rolled out the beta version of an industry-first natural language SharePoint site creator, LiveTiles Build.”

Other companies in the Australian IT channel to have floated on the stock market include Perth's Cirrus Networks and MOQdigital, while both Readify and Vonex, last year's CRN Fast50 No.1, are currently planning to float.