Cinderella
By Om Malik
s a startup, Ciena Corp. (CIEN) attracted a
buzz even before the Linthicum, Md.-based
company went public. In a fairy tale debut on
Feb. 7, 1997, Ciena hit the public markets as
the highest-valued IPO of all time.
Ciena, a maker of fiber-optic hardware that can be
used for adding high-capacity communication links
between major cities is a hot company in these days
of high demand for telecommunication. With the
current bandwidth crunch, Ciena's technology has
many takers, analysts say.
With an opening price of $23 a share, Ciena was
valued at a whopping $2.1 billion. One year later,
Ciena stock is trading at $53, and the company has a
market cap of $5 billion.
Ciena's first-day performance puts it in hallowed
company: Apple (AAPL), which had a market cap
of $1.2 billion on day one; Netscape's (NSCP) $1
billion debut market cap, matched only by
chipmaker Xylan (XYLN).
Ciena's strong stock market performance has made
its backers quite rich. The company had raised
approximately $25 million from a large syndicate of
VC firms. The three initial VC investors were
Interwest Partners, Sevin Rosen, and Vanguard
Venture Partners. Subsequent rounds were funded
by the likes of Bessemer Venture Partners; JAFCO
America Ventures; Charles River Ventures; Weiss,
Peck & Greer; American Telephone & Telegraph
Ventures; and Star Venture Entities.
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