First exit in 2007: Amdocs buying SigValue for $85 million

It's the first exit in 2007: billing & customer-care software giant Amdocs (NYSE: DOX) is buying the Israeli real-time cellular billing and messaging applications startup SigValue Technologies for $85 million.

Sources: The Marker (Hebrew), Haaretz

The exit is a terrific one for SigValue's investors: according to IVC Online, the startup has received about $9 million in backing. That means investors will be getting back nine times their investment.

The venture capital funds AIG Orion and Holland Venture each placed $3.5 million into SigValue. Amdocs itself, the buyer, put in $2 million in SigValue's second financing round, which brought the startup $7 million at a company value of just $19 million.

SigValue was founded in 2000 by Eli Yardeni, formerly the switching and new technologies manager at Pelephone Communications, and Yuval Mayron, manager of applications and new technologies also at Pelephone, and now SigValue's chief technology officer. Yardeni handles sales at the startup.

SigValue's technology solves the problem of billing prepaid customers for use of added-value services such as SMS messaging and purchases via cellular Internet. The company also offers solutions for post-paid. Its sales passed $10 million in 2006.

Amdocs today has 150 communications companies on its client list, including vendors of regular phone services, cellular, cable TV, satellite and Internet. This is the second Israeli company's it's known to have bought, the first being