Malvern-based clinical trial SaaS (& services) firm Y Prime gets $5 million investment

Tom Paine

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Florida-based Ballast Point Ventures announced last week a $5 million investment in Malvern-based Y Prime, a provider of software products and professional services aimed at optimizing the management and performance of global clinical trials. Y Prime was founded in 2006 by Shawn Blackburn and Jaime Cook, who had prior experience at both Cephalon and Perceptive Informatics.

One aspect of Y Prime's technology platform is that it is designed to help customers conduct “adaptive trials,” a method of running clinical trials that allows for immediate changes to be made during a trial. This technology provides customers with a means of quickly reacting to potential changes in a study without incurring costly delays and change orders, Ballast Point said in its release.

Y Prime's software products include Interactive Response Technology (IRT), eMonitoring Visit Report (eMVR), Patient Reported Outcome (ePro), Clinical Trial Management Systems (CTMS), and Clinical Supply Forecasting and Logistics (eCSF). Y Prime refers to its cloud-based offerings as being a "Software With a Service" platform, emphasizing the service component it brings to the party. The company appears to have about 30 employees, according to a photo layout on its website (although its LinkedIn Page shows 39). A note on the Chester County Economic Development Council's website indicates that Y Prime had 2012 revenue of $5.5 million.

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Valuations: How much is Verizon's landline business worth?

Tom Paine

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The value the market places on Verizon's ( (NYSE: VZ) non-wireless business (essentially, what is considered the landline business) has been difficult to determine. But perhaps its recent agreement to buy out Vodafone's stake in Verizon Wireless provides some clues. Then again, perhaps not.

The Vodafone deal values Verizon Wireless at about $290 billion. By that measure, Verizon's 55% stake would then presumably be valued at $159.5 billion.

The market cap for Verizon (which includes its Verizon Wireless stake) is about $134 billion. Acording to Capital IQ, Verizon's enterprise value, a measure that typically equates to market cap plus debt, minority interest and preferred shares, minus total cash and cash equivalents, is $184.1 billion.

Verizon's non-wireless assets include its advanced fiber FiOS footprint, its legacy copper telephone footprint, and a strong enterprise business, which includes its Terramark enterprise cloud business acquired in 2011.

At times, there has been speculation that the landline business could be spun off. Another, perhaps more likely, alternative would be an increased use of the wireless network to supplement, and in some cases replace the copper network using 4G LTE. The single ownership of the two businesses should make a more integrated approach to managing them possible. Broadband Reports' Karl Bode does suggest that Verizon may consider selling (or dumping) some non-core area, copper-based networks, as it did previously to Frontier and Fairpoint.

There has been considerable debate as to whether Verizon's FiOS investment, which has been somewhere in the $20 billion range, has paid off.