NextStage Capital Adds Fifteenth Portfolio Company
NextStage Participates in $2.5 million Financing of Lumesis, Inc.
Financial Technology Company Supports Market Participants during Transformation of Municipal Bond Market
Audubon, PA, February 22, 2012 – NextStage Capital, L.P., a leading early stage venture capital fund focused on investing in technology companies located in the Mid-Atlantic region, today announced its investment into financial services technology company, Lumesis, Inc. (www.lumesis.com). Stamford, Ct.-based Lumesis provides data and credit analysis tools to the municipal bond industry via a SaaS model.
The company, founded by two former municipal bond insurance executives, Gregg Bienstock and Tim Stevens, is presently a stand-alone in providing a comprehensive platform of economic and demographic data to help municipal fixed income professionals identify risks in their portfolio, recognize opportunities in the market, and significantly enhance decision-making. Through its primary product, DIVER, and its Continuing Disclosure Management (CDM) service, Lumesis offers clients an interactive, web-based research tool that offers visualization, analytics and notifications. The technology allows users to evaluate their portfolios or individual CUSIPs against an aggregated database of demographic and economic indicators providing meaningful insights into the underlying financial health of an issuer. Ultimately, DIVER does the heavy data lifting so credit analysts, portfolio managers, RIAs and issuers/underwriters can spend their time producing superior results for their constituents.
While the $3.7 trillion municipal bond industry remains robust and never experienced the level of defaults many predicted due to the economic downturn, its fundamentals, however, have undergone dramatic change. Once considered the safest and least in need of detailed analysis beyond a simple credit agency rating, muni bonds now carry with them a variety of risk management and compliance issues brought on by declining tax bases, shifting bond rating criteria, and a wholesale decrease in insured bonds – from 50% in 2008 to less than 10% today. Lumesis and its products specifically address these risk and compliance demands faced by muni bond credit analysts, portfolio managers, registered investment advisors (RIAs), issuers and underwriters. And while the municipal market is evolving to address muni credits like all other credits, there exist no fundamental data analysis tools in support of this change.
NexStage into the $2.5 million round that was lead by Safeguard Scientifics, Inc. (NYSE: SFE)
About NextStage Capital
NextStage Capital, L.P. is a leading seed and early stage venture capital fund focused on investing in undiscovered software and hardware technology and/or services companies in the Mid-Atlantic region. NextStage Capital's investment approach is to find entrepreneurs with solid track records who offer a unique and powerful value proposition to customers in growing market sectors. For more information on NextStage Capital, please visit: www.nextstagecapital.com.
About Lumesis
Lumesis is dedicated to delivering timely data, robust visualization and analytical tools and time-sensitive notifications for the fixed income marketplace. We strive to enhance our client's success by providing relevant and timely information, data and analytical tools that enrich their analysis and decision-making. Our experienced professionals bring a unique set of skills in credit analysis, portfolio management, finance, banking and law. Lumesis combines these disciplines with a talented team of developers to generate cutting-edge tools for use by portfolio managers, credit analysts, risk managers, investment bankers, academia and other industry professionals. DIVER brings our clients more than 130 data sets from more than 30 distinct sources. DIVER provides timely and meaningful demographic and economic data that impact the fiscal well-being of States, counties and other municipalities. DIVER includes Data and Portfolio Visualization tools, Data and Portfolio Analytics and a series of Notification Applications to keep you abreast of continuing disclosure filings as well as data updates keyed to a user's unique interests. For more information, please visit our website at www.lumesis.com or call us at 203.274.8615.
