PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec 17, 1999 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Following the
path of competitors Yahoo Inc. and Excite, Silicon Valley search engine
AltaVista Co. plans to go public.
The IPO plans were revealed in a filing late Friday with the Securities
and Exchange Commission by AltaVista's parent investor CMGI Inc., which
bought a majority share of the company four months ago.
While the actual structure of the offering remained undisclosed, the
company said the initial public offering -- sometime early next year --
will be led by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.
The offering caps a year of great change at AltaVista. In January,
Compaq Computer Corp. bought the company when it acquired AltaVista's
parent, Digital Equipment Corp. Compaq later added other Web companies,
notably Shopping.com and Zip2 Corp., to the AltaVista umbrella.
In August, Compaq then turned around and sold 83 percent of AltaVista
to CMGI for $1.9 billion.
The Andover, Mass.-based CMGI has moved to make AltaVista a centerpiece
of its numerous Internet properties, and had been widely expected to
spin it off into a publicly traded company.
While AltaVista has consistently been the most favored search engine in
Europe, it ranks globally behind such competitors as Yahoo!, MSN,
Netscape, Go, Lycos and Excite, according to Web rankings service Media
Metrix.
In an effort to build its brand, AltaVista launched an aggressive
marketing campaign in late October. In late November, AltaVista bought
the Raging Bull online financial community.
Like many Internet companies, AltaVista has yet to make a profit. For
the quarter ended Oct. 31, the company logged $52.6 million in revenue
and recorded a $267.8 million net loss.
Copyright 1999 Associated Press, All rights reserved |
