iTurf shares almost triples after IPO - [Not bad at all]
By Bloomberg News
Special to CNET News.com
April 9, 1999, 1:15 p.m. PT
NEW YORK-- iTurf, the online unit of clothing retailer Delia*s, almost tripled as it began trading for the first time, giving the company an instant market value of $1 billion.
The New York-based company rose 34.50 to 56.50 as 5.3 million shares changed hands on the Nasdaq Stock Market in its first hour of trading this afternoon. The shares opened at 60 and touched a high of 66. Yesterday, iTurf sold 4.2 million shares, a 25 percent stake, at $22 each, raising $92.4 million.
iTurf, which sells clothes and provides chat rooms for 10-to-24 year olds, a group it calls Generation Y, is one of the few money-making Internet companies to sell shares. It earned $464,000 on revenue of $4 million in the year ended Jan. 31 after losing $40,000 on revenue of $134,000 the previous year.
iTurf "seems to be one of the more well-planned Internet companies that have gone public recently," said Mark Basham, an analyst with Standard & Poor's equity group. "Instead of just being an e-commerce site, they've realized that they need to provide a more comprehensive solution."
iTurf, which says its target audience of 56 million people has $278 billion of disposable income, operates popular Web sites. It said 35 million of its pages were seen in February, up from 800,000 the same month a year earlier. iTurf also provides chat rooms and personal home pages for its customers.
iTurf will benefit by being the first in its segment of the online retailing market, Basham said. Still, the company, like other Internet companies, faces much uncertainty in the longer term, he said.
"A lot of the Internet companies, and particularly the ones that are going public now, are likely to fail at some point down the road," Besham said. "There's very little additional barriers to entry" by competitors. Also, "management experience doesn't seem to be an important criteria for any of these companies, and clearly that is going to matter," he said.
iTurf trades under the symbol "TURF." .... |
