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Luminus Devices lights up $19M in new funding

Billerica LED-maker Luminus Devices Inc. has closed on a new round of funding worth $19 million that was led by investors Argonaut Private Equity, Braemer Energy Ventures, Paladin Capital Group and Stata Venture Partners. According to president and CEO Keith Ward, the funding should be the last the company needs to reach profitability.

“The entire purpose of this amount of money is that this money will indeed get us to cash flow break even some time in late 2011,” Ward said.

The funding is a recapitalization for Luminus, which has raised approximately $172 million since it was spun out of MIT in 2002. The new funding is the latest in a series of moves that began last May when Luminus brought on board former General Electric Co. veteran Ward as the new president and CEO. Ward said the latest funding was part of an operational plan he implemented when he started at Luminus. That plan seems to be working, as Luminus doubled its 2009 revenue over 2008 numbers, Ward said. And its future goals are just as ambitious.

“Our operating plan in 2010 is double of 2009’s actual,” he said.

According to Ward, the Luminus customer base for its PhlatLight LEDs is mainly in the fields of specialty lighting applications, projection displays, digital signage and ultra violet-industrial processes. And the company has seen adoption of its latest products, which produce white light instead ofg a specific color.

“We are not a year old in the white light space and we are getting some really good traction in this space,” Ward said.

Overall, he said, “our big customers are getting bigger, and our medium customers are placing orders more frequently and we are getting new customers. In December we had the largest month in our history and in January we had a larger month. In February we are going to beat our projection by 20 to 25 percent.”