Robert LaPenta believes in biometrics. After all, you don't put your money where your mouth is if you don't believe. This is the guy who just today has offered $1.05 per share for each share of ComnetiX, a Canadian biometrics company that does fingerprint recognition, especially ones for police departments.
Of course, LaPenta (via his biometrics investment arm L-1) isn't the only one going after ComnetiX. BIO-key, another fingerprint recognition player is also making a thirsty offer for the shares of Comnetix.
So, who are they after? Well, Comnetix has been around for quite sometime. I dug up some earlier info on this company and it seems that back in the summer of 2004, for every 2 dollars they brought in, 3 dollars went out the door. This was a company that had previously operated with profits. Then in the summer of 2005, the company jumped on the chance to acquire Paragon Total Solutions, a biometrics firm based out of a small town near Atlanta, Ga. That acquisition further placed ComnetiX in the public safety/law enforcement space.
So now, with L-1's offer topping a previous offer by BIO-key, and with the ComnetiX B.o.D. telling its shareholders that this is a good thing, it looks like the L-1/ComnetiX deal is about to be served. And that will further grow L-1, which has been buying up the biometrics space with a little bit of a splash.
LaPenta is waiting for, of course, that critical instance when biometrics technology starts to take off like personal computers. It took a long time, admittedly, before PCs were commonplace in U.S. homes, but I'm not sure we're that far away from it happening with biometrics. And that, I think, is what makes LaPenta -- who is first and foremost a savvy investor -- a true believer.
-Geoff
