Mpath Rocks on while Musickmaker postpones----->MarketWatch
Live community Mpath debuts
Musicmaker.com postpones IPO to talk deals
By Bambi Francisco, CBS MarketWatch
Last Update: 1:59 PM ET Apr 29, 1999 Net Stocks
Internet Daily
NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- As investors sit tight for Musicmaker.com's postponed Wall Street debut, the IPO jamming rocks on with Net debutante Mpath Interactive.
MPath (MPTH: news, msgs) shares opened up 94 percent to 35 on their first day of trading as investors scrambled to get in after many had been left out of the 3.9 million-share offering, priced at $18 per share.
With two hours left in the trading day, shares of the latest IPO to hit the Street were trading at 38 1/2.
Early demand for the hot stock led lead banker BancBoston Robertson Stephens to revise the offering higher by 64 percent from original expectations.
After the dust settles on this debut day, the stock market value for the Mountain View, Calif.-based firm will likely swell well above the $381 million that the bankers had calculated to be the reasonable value for the company. Mpath generated $8 million in sales last year and lost $11.9 million.
No more static
"Mpath brings a new dimension to Web site communities," said Randall Roth, an analyst at Renaissance. "Before we had static communities, but now it's really interactive."
Mpath develops and licenses technology to create live community sites, which allows instantaneous interaction. The company boasts more than 2.6 million registered users who generated 50,000 unique daily visits and stayed on for an average of more than an hour and a half each day. Based on the lengthy time spent online, Mpath's audience is appealing to advertisers, which like to put their ads in front of so-called sticky audiences.
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