Next Biometrics soars as Swedish investors buys big stake

OSLO/STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Norwegian fingerprint sensor maker Next Biometrics said it would raise 120 million Norwegian crowns ($14.78 million) from Greenbridge Partners, a firm founded by Swedish investors Melker Schorling and Ola Rollen, sending shares soaring. "Greenbridge Partners Ltd has undertaken a thorough process before making the investment decision," Next said in a statement on Friday. Shares of the Norwegian firm shot up 64 percent at 0417 EDT. "Next has a fantastic opportunity to become a big player within smartcards," Rollen told Reuters. Melker Schorling is one of Sweden's most prominent investors and his investment company Melker Schorling AB owns major stakes in companies like measurement technology and software firm Hexagon, lock maker Assa Abloy and security firm Securitas. Ola Rollen, CEO at Hexagon, also holds a big stake in Next's Swedish peer Fingerprint Cards, and during Rollen's 15-year reign at Hexagon, the firm's market value has risen from a few billion Swedish crowns to the current 95 billion. Rollen said he saw a bright future for Next, in part due to the firm's thermal technology being less brittle than silicon wafers used by other peers, a key characteristic as credit cards need to be able to bend. In 2020, there will be around 4.6 billion credit cards and 3.5 billion electronic devices with fingerprint sensors, said Rollen referring to many different industry analyses. "And assuming that the sensor price falls down towards $2.30, then this will be a $19 billion industry, just within these two segments," he said. Next plans to hold an extraordinary meeting of its shareholders to approve the planned issue of two million shares at a price of 60 crowns each. Greenbridge Partners also said it had agreed to buy 333,333 shares from Ecomnex Holding AS, a company wholly owned by board member Ngoc Minh Dinh, at 60 crowns each. ($1 = 8.1173 Norwegian crowns) (Reporting by Johannes Hellstrom, Terje Solsvik, editing by Gwladys Fouche)