Meteor MMI.A has got them all beat
Akamai has covered only one small aspect of the Internet; Meteor's capabilities are all inclusive-they cover the whole thing. Both the Internet and Intranet arenas.
Saturday October 30 12:05 AM ET
Akamai Soars On Demand For Fast Web Services
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) - Born in a lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Akamai Technologies Inc., whose services speed Web content to users, Friday hit Wall Street with a vengeance as its shares jumped 458 percent after its $26 a share initial public offering.
Akamai shares rose $119 3/16 to close at $145 3/16 on the Nasdaq, the fourth-largest ever percentage gain on the first day of trading for an IPO.
The Cambridge, Mass.-based firm raised $234 million after pricing 9 million shares above its already increased expected price range. Akamai had initially said it planned to price 6 million shares in a range of $16-$18, raising $108 million.
Akamai monitors Internet traffic and finds the most efficient way to move data through the system. The service intends to capitalize on surging Internet e-business traffic. Customers include numerous large Web, media and retail firms.
``A lot of Web sites are content and graphics intensive. Akamai's technology speeds up download time for the end customer,' said Ullas Naik, analyst at First Albany.
Research firm Jupiter Communications found that in June 1999 if response times at a particular site didn't meet users' expectations 37 percent of users visited a substitute site.
``It's a rapidly growing market,' said Zia Daniel-Whittaker, an analyst at Jupiter. ``Akamai is an early mover in the space and they have inked deals with many prominent players.'
Akamai has technology-development pacts with Cisco Systems Inc (Nasdaq:CSCO - news). and Microsoft Corp (Nasdaq:MSFT - news). Competitors include Sandpiper Networks Inc., which was recently bought by Digital Island Inc (Nasdaq:ISLD - news). in a stock swap valued at $630 million.
Akamai brought in $1.3 million in revenue for the nine months ended Sept. 30, with a net loss of $1.3 million.
``Its challenge is going to be to grow out its infrastructure at the rate they want. To meet their financial projections, they will have to have aggressive roll-out plans, but I think these guys can do it,' Naik added.
Akamai, which means for ``smart' and ``cool' in Hawaiian, was founded by F. Thomson Leighton, a professor of applied mathematics at MIT, and Daniel Lewin, one of his graduate students. Last year, Akamai's technology was entered in MIT's annual $50K Entrepreneurship Competition, and did not take first prize.
But the firm's much-anticipated IPO probably brought solace Friday, along with millions of dollars in paper wealth.
Lehman Brothers analyst Bill Garrahan said the success of Akamai's IPO exceeded what were already high expectations.
``The value proposition here is easy to grasp: They have built very sophisticated software solutions to help solve the congestion on the Internet by moving high bandwidth content closer to the customer,' he said
enough hysteria for tonight. |
