Artis Unlisted in Aruba S-1

Aruba Wireless revealed it would price shares in its initial public offering between $8 and $10 per share, according to a regulatory filing.

Aruba raised a total of $86 million in four rounds from investors, according to Thomson Financial (publisher of PEHub.com). The company is compelled by securities law to list any owners of more than 5% of its stock at the time of its IPO. The firm lists Matrix Partners as owning 22.4% before the public offering, Sequoia Capital owning 20.4%, Trinity Ventures owning 15.3%, WK Technology owning 7.7% and CEO Dominic Orr owning 10.3 percent.

Missing from this list is Artis Capital Management, the hedge fund that invested in YouTube. Artis participated in Aruba’s $30 million Series D investment round. It suggests that Artis owns less than 5% of Aruba, which would trigger a disclosure. Jay Nichols, a spokesman for Aruba, would not say how much of Aruba Artis owns, citing a pre-IPO quiet period.

Artis also participated in chipmaker Open Silicon’s $15 million Series C in October 2005, and it invested in online advertising service company AdBrite’s $8 million Series B in February 2006. It invested an undisclosed amount in YouTube’s Series B in April 2006. The video sharing website was bought last year by Google Inc. for $1.5 billion in stock, a sale that earned Artis $60.5 million, according to a recent regulatory filing by Google.

Each one of these tech startups have also been backed by Sequoia Capital. One of the Artis investors is David Lamond, the son of Sequoia Partner Pierre Lamond, as PE Week previously reported.

The hedge fund increased its holdings by $180 million during the fourth quarter, according to regulatory filings. The investment firm now manages more than $1.5 billion in assets.

Artis sold about 20% of its total portfolio value during the fourth quarter, exchanging 59 stocks from its 147-stock portfolio for 36 new stocks.

At the end of 2006, it owned shares worth $125.4 million in Equity Office Properties Trust (NYSE: EOP), before the company was bought out by The Blackstone Group; it owned shares worth $116.3 million in Cypress Semiconductor (NYSE: CY), a former Sequoia Capital-backed company; and it owned shares worth $103.6 million in Intersil Corp. (Nasdaq: ISIL).

The SEC has a list of the firm’s holdings as of the end of 2006.