When most people hear about Safeguard Scientifics, they think back to when the publicly traded venture capital firm was worth billions of dollars owing to its stake in Internet Capital Group. At the time, analysts wrote reports stating that Safeguard was dramatically undervalued since a sum of the parts analysis showed that Safeguard's market capitalization was worth less than the value of its stake in publicly traded ICG. Not to mention its holding in 50 other startups. But, the market was ultimately right because when the Internet bubble burst, Safeguard and its portfolio companies got hit hard.

Fast forward seven years and a new case can be made that Safeguard is undervalued. Except we're no longer talking billions. The scale of the company has fallen into the hundreds of millions.

Peter Boni is in San Francisco today at the JMP Securities investor conference explaining why he thinks the company's market capitalization of $300 million is woefully low. His main argument is that the $300 million figure is only 20% more than the value of the company's $150 million cash pile and its $90 million stake in publicly traded Clarient. That means the market is valuing its stakes in 15 other portfolio companies at just $60 million.

I suggested to him that the company go private, but Boni didn't want to talk about that. Instead, he said it's a gradual education process and noted that the company's analyst coverage has grown from 1 to 4 since he joined in August 2005. He's excited about the diversity of the portfolio and companies such as NexTone Communications and Portico Systems do seem to be winning customers and growing.

Safeguard last exited a holding when anti-money laundering software company Mantas was sold to i-flex for $122 million last year. Safeguard owned 88% of Mantas. If Boni can continue to complete impressive exits like that, he may just achieve his goal of taking Safeguard's market capitalization to $1 billion.

Here is a look at the firm's complete portfolio now:

Tags: safeguard, safeguard+scientific, vc, venture+capital