SCO Gets $10 Million Private Investment

Published: January 12, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Unix vendor SCO Group may have been able to cap its legal costs with its lawyers in the lawsuits it has raging with IBM, Novell, and Red Hat, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need to raise money as it tried to breathe some life into its Unix operating system business.

To help bolster its finances, SCO has been able to sell 2.85 million shares of its common stock to unnamed yet existing institutional investors and one member of its board of directors. The institutional investors bought the shares at $3.50 per share and the board member bought them at $3.92 per share, raising $10 million for SCO. This amount of money is roughly what SCO brings in for Unix licenses in a typical quarter over the past couple of years.

"Our current strategies have continued to focus on creating innovative mobile technologies for new customers, delivering reliable Unix products for existing customers, and protecting our intellectual property rights for all company stakeholders," said Darl McBride, president and chief executive officer, in a statement accompanying the announcement of the private investment. "This added investment is a vote of confidence by our existing investors that will bolster our efforts over the long-term to succeed in the marketplace with our products and continue protecting our intellectual property."