Companies are queuing up to buy troubled IoT company Sigfox following the firm being placed into receivership.

French courts gave Sigfox until 25 February to find a buyer and invited companies to bid.

Nine potential candidates submitted bids. They are Actility, Buffet Investment Services Consortium, Greybull Capital, Heliot Europe, Iwire Innovation Management, Oteis France, Sentiens, UnaBiz and Groupe Zekat. And seven of them (all but Actility and Buffet Investment Services Consortium) also put in bids for its subsidiary Sigfox France SAS.

The nine companies have formally approached the court-appointed administrators. These offers provide evidence of the interest in Sigfox’s technological profile, its market potential and the quality of its teams, said the French company.

Over the next few weeks, the bodies involved in the procedure, and in particular the receivers who are working alongside the management and the employee representatives, will examine these offers and their implications for Sigfox. Meanwhile, Sigfox’s management will talk with the takeover candidates to improve the content as much as possible in the interest of the company, its employees and its technology.

The company’s management say they will communicate on the next steps of the procedure, in compliance with its rules, and respecting the primacy of information due to the court, to insolvency officers and to the employee representatives.

Sigfox was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Labège, France, with offices in Boston, Dallas, Dubai, Madrid, Paris, Sao Paulo, Singapore and Tokyo.