March 2, 2000
IPOs From Onvia, MatrixOne
Meet an Enthusiastic Response
By TERZAH EWING
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Two technology IPOs each nearly tripled in value, continuing a run of
recent successes for the sector as the market awaits Thursday morning's
expected debut of Palm Inc.
The initial public stock offerings of MatrixOne Inc. and Onvia.com Inc.
saw their deals soar 195% and 193%, respectively. MatrixOne, which
makes business-collaboration software, ended on Nasdaq at $73.8125, up
from its offer price of $25 a share. Onvia.com, an "e-marketplace" for
businesses, rose to $61.50 on Nasdaq from an offer price of $21.
Now, investors are waiting for the trading debut of the week's most closely
watched deal: that of handheld-computer company Palm Inc., a unit of
3Com Corp. Palm's IPO, lead-underwritten by Goldman Sachs Group
Inc. and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., priced last night at $38 a
share and is expected to begin trading Thursday on the Nasdaq Stock
Market. The final pricing was above the deal's expected price range of $30
to $32 a share, which was itself a doubling of the original range of $14 to
$16 a share.
One reason for the scrutiny of the Palm deal: Only 23 million shares were
sold in the offering. Another handful of shares were doled out to America
Online Inc., Motorola Inc. and Nokia Corp. in a private placement. 3Com
retained an ownership stake of about 94% after the IPO. There are 562.3
million shares outstanding.
Ahead of the Palm deal, shares of 3Com rose
to a record, ending at $104.125, up $6.125,
in Nasdaq Stock Market trading at 4 p.m.
Wednesday. The company's stock has jumped
since Palm filed for its IPO; investors have
bought 3Com shares in order to be entitled to
Palm stock when 3Com spins off the rest of
Palm to shareholders. That spinoff is expected
this year.
Goldman Sachs led the IPO of MatrixOne,
Chelmsford, Mass. Among the beneficiaries of the stock's run: Compaq
Computer Corp., which has a stake of about 4.7%, now valued at about
$132.9 million.
Onvia.com's eight-million share deal was lead-underwritten by Credit
Suisse Group's Credit Suisse First Boston. Onvia.com, of Seattle, was also
the latest offering from a company that had been financed by
business-to-business holding company Internet Capital Group. After
adding to its pre-IPO stake in Onvia.com through a private placement,
Internet Capital owns about 21.8%, or 17.2 million shares valued at about
$1.06 billion at Wednesday's ending price.
Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal and the Interactive
Journal, has a contract with Onvia, which advertises and sells services on
the dowjones.com Web site (www.dowjones.com). Onvia pays $25,000
a month for this month-to-month contract, according to the company's
prospectus.
Zebu Files for IPO
Meanwhile, Zebu said it filed a registration with the Securities and
Exchange Commission to raise as much as $64 million in an initial public
offering. Zebu provides Internet-based software used to process insurance
applications and is a direct marketer of term life insurance. It will use
proceeds from the offering to develop technology products, expand its
sales and marketing efforts and have working capital.
The company didn't disclose the number of shares it plans to offer or its
estimated selling price. Deutsche Bank AG's Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown
will act as the lead underwriter.
Write to Terzah Ewing at terzah.ewing@wsj.com |
