Andover.Net Rides Open-Source Excitement- UpSide
Amein, here is an interesting article on the Andover and Linux in general.
===========
News Special
December 08, 1999
by Sam Williams
It looks like the days when "Linux" was a word known only to conspiratorial geeks in the bowels of corporate IT departments are truly gone. Judging by Wednesday's market reception for Andover.Net (ANDN), the Acton, Mass.-based company that runs a boatload of Web sites catered to the open source software crowd, "Linux" is entering the hallowed hall of dumb money buzzwords right up alongside "Internet," "portal" and "e-commerce."
Even after a last-minute repricing--last Friday the expected range of Andover.Net's offering was raised to $15 to 18 a share from $11 to 13--company shares still rocketed out of the gate, climbing 252 percent to $63 3/8 by day's end.
Like a Ricky Martin single, Andover.Net shares rode a bullet throughout the day. Share prices peaked above $66, and were charging to regain that high by the end of the day, an indication of the strong aftermarket demand waiting to get on board.
Asked to provide an end-of-the-day analysis, IPO Monitor senior analyst Gail Bronson could only laugh.
"The market's hot for Linux," Bronson said. "I think anyone trying to make a microscopic analysis of this is on a fool's errand. If it's Linux, it's gonna go higher."
One company that might not be laughing, though, is Andover.Net. Today's IPO was mediated by Open IPO, a service of W.R. Hambrecht & Co. OpenIPO employs a Dutch auction in which early investors place their bids ahead of the marketplace. Higher bids automatically negate lower bids, giving companies a chance to push their market caps higher prior to the IPO.
A spokesperson for W.R. Hambrecht & Co said that because of latent market demand, Andover.Net's offering of 4 million shares could have started as high as $24 -- a difference equivalent to $16 million in lost value for Andover.Net. Such a repricing would have required resubmitting and delaying the IPO, however, so company executives elected to stay within the $11 to 18 range, the limit of their original filing.
Andover.Net executives were not available to comment, but VA Linux Systems (LNUX), the Santa Clara-based maker of Linux-enabled hardware systems, reacted to similar pent-up energy late Wednesday by refiling with the the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to the new filing, VA Linux will sell 4.4 million shares at $28 to 30 each, a few dollars above the $21 to $23 range announced Tuesday and more than double the initial $11 to $13 range.
Other Linux companies had mixed results today. Red Hat (RHAT), the company that initiated the current wave of Linux mania back in August when it jumped 272 percent on its first day of trading, lost 4.5 percent, falling to $271 1/4. On the other side of the coin, Corel (CORL), a software company that launched its new Linux distribution at Comdex, gained 24 percent, climbing to C$41.75.
All told, Andover.Net shares seemed to benefit from a triple whammy: Linux mania, a rising tech sector and a strong IPO market. The morning's other successful IPOs included Agency.com (ACOM), which rose 192.3 percent; and NetRatings (NTRT), which rose 64.7 percent.
upside.com |
