PORT TOWNSEND — Intellicheck Mobilisa Inc. plans to hire 10 sales people after a public stock offering last week grossed about $4 million before fees are deducted.
The Port Townsend-based company — which sells wireless technology and identity systems to government, military and commercial markets — offered 7,780,000 shares of its common stock to the public at $0.45 per share through Aegis Capital Corp. of New York City.
“It sold quickly,” said Nelson Ludlow, CEO of Intellicheck Mobilisa. “We sold those offers on Thursday.”
Proceeds will go toward hiring more sales staff both for the Olympic Peninsula and the New York office of the company, he said.
“We just don’t have enough sales people. We have about five, and we want to go to 15.”
Ludlow plans to fill most positions locally, said Heather Flanagan, recently hired director of marketing.
“Nelson cares about jobs for the Olympic Peninsula,” she said.
Interest in the sale was high, Ludlow said.
“In fact, it’s what’s technically called oversubscribed, where we had more people wanting shares than we offered,” he explained.
After the sale of the stocks offered to the public raised approximately $3.5 million, the company sold an additional 15 percent of shares of common stock that was oversubscribed, he said.
An underwriting discount and other expenses will be deducted from the gross.
Sales staff hired will have to travel, Ludlow said.
“We don’t do it by regions. We do it by sectors, so we’ll hire a person just to handle hotels, someone just to handle retail, someone to handle military sales, etc.”
Ludlow, who grew up in Port Townsend, co-founded Mobilisa in 2001 and built readers for identification cards for military bases.
Mobilisa merged with Intellicheck, a company based in New York City, in March 2008.
Ludlow, now 52, was made CEO of the combined company and moved the headquarters to Port Townsend.
He ran it until 2011 when he left for other opportunities, and then took over again in 2012.