CARB closed at $12.35 today, up $2.35 from its offering price.
No LinkedIn Pop, but Carbonite Still Climbs 23% in Debut
By EVELYN M. RUSLI
New York Times
DealBook
August 11, 2011 11:32 am
4:16 p.m. | Updated
It was not quite a LinkedIn debut, but Carbonite still reaped in strong gains in its first day of trading.
Carbonite, an online data storage company that went public on Thursday, rose 23.5 percent from its initial public offering price of $10 to close at $12.35. The stock rose as high as $13.40 in its first hour of trading.
The company, which raised $62.5 million in its offering, was buoyed by a broader market rally on Thursday — the Dow Jones industrial average closed up 4 percent, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index gained 4.6 percent, bouncing back from sharp losses on Wednesday.
“It’s too bad that we went public in the worst possible public market,” David Friend, Carbonite’s chief executive, said in an interview earlier on Thursday. ” But our business model is very predictable; investors are very scared, and Carbonite provides that predictability.”
Over the last week, stocks have violently seesawed, as investors try to make sense of the instability in Europe and debt issues at home. The volatility has forced companies considering public offerings to retreat. So far this week, 9 of of 12 nine companies scheduled to go public have postponed their offerings, according to data from Renaissance Capital.
Carbonite, meanwhile, part of the as-of-late flourishing technology sector, had to pull back on its price range. Its eventual offering price of $10 per share was sharply below its previous forecast of $15 to $17 per share. The company, which makes its money from subscriptions for its online backup service, posted a loss of $25.8 million on $36.5 million in revenue last year. Still, sales roughly doubled every year for the last three years, according to a recent filing.
“We kept ticking along during the last debacle in 2008, and continued to grow,” Mr. Friend said. “I think our message of predictability resonated with the big funds.”
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