Company Outline
In 1993, John Scott, the CEO of XL TechGroup, with several other founders, formed a company called XL Vision, with majority funding from Safeguard Scientifics. Using the precursor version of the current XL TechGroup methodology, they created eight companies, six of which achieved successful exits either through trade sales or IPOs.
In 2002, XL TechGroup was formed as a completely new, value-creation company. Its key guiding principles include:
- The market (not the technology) must come first;
- Building a disruptive, market-changing company must have systematic foundations;
- The development of such companies is a non-linear process (i.e. strategies must adapt to the changes they produce in the market), so it is imperative to retain control and guide those strategies.
Incorporated in the USA, XL TechGroup successfully listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange in October 2004 in an IPO that raised £22.6 million and attracted a top quality list of institutional investors. This offering provided the cash necessary to develop existing opportunities within the Company's pipeline, as well as to create new opportunities to refresh the pipeline.
XL TechGroup’s companies are:
PetroAlgae was created by XL TechGroup in September 2006 to commercialize a proprietary library of algae that combines the unique characteristics of rapid growth rate and high lipid content. The algae are cultivated in modular bioreactors that can be operated cost-effectively at commercial scale. Harvest occurs on a daily basis, producing up to 200 times more feedstock oil per acre than traditional crops such as soybeans. PetroAlgae is 94.6% owned by XL TechGroup.
TyraTech was created by XL TechGroup in May 2004 and is developing and commercializing highly effective, proprietary insecticide and parasiticide products which incorporate unique blends of safer, natural, plant oil derived active ingredients. TyraTech's product pipeline addresses a diversity of pesticide market opportunities in human and animal treatments; domestic, commercial and hospitality facilities, as well as farms and fields. TyraTech was listed on AIM in June 2007 and is now 45.5% owned by XL TechGroup.
DxTech was created by XL TechGroup in July 2005 and is developing a unique micro-fluidic system that essentially replaces the full range of common blood tests currently performed at reference laboratories around the world with a fully-automated, point-of-care technology that is intended to provide reference laboratory quality results in real time. This will result in significant new revenue streams for physicians' offices, increased healthcare efficiencies and improved patient outcomes, all of which will lead to rapid adoption. DxTech is 83.7% owned by XL TechGroup.
QuoNova was established in December 2006 by XL TechGroup, and is commercialising a novel, market-changing technology called Quorum Sensing Blockers which affects signalling between bacteria and thereby prevents the growth of bacterial biofilms. Biofilms are produced by bacterial colonies to protect themselves against efforts to remove or eradicate them and are the cause of significant unmet needs in disease (such as cystic fibrosis and chronic wound care), in the home (such as in oral care and resistant Staph infections (MRSA)) and in multiple industrial environments (such as oil and water pipes). QuoNova is currently 88.7% owned by XL TechGroup.
XL TechGroup established GenXL in 2006 as a joint venture with GEN3 Partners (whose Chairman & Founder, Jim Sims, founded Cambridge Technology Partners, Inc., Cambridge MA in 1991) to capture the value of those prospects that do not fully meet XL TechGroup's US$400 million, four-year criteria but still demonstrate considerable potential worth. Over and above XL TechGroup's core business model, GenXL reviews opportunities from both XL TechGroup and GEN3 in order to generate new companies, stand-alone product lines and technology licensing opportunities, or an appropriate mix of these. XL TechGroup currently has a 43.3% stake in GenXL.
