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Technology Stocks : Red Hat Software Inc. (Nasdq-RHAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Rubakh who wrote (293)	8/11/1999 6:41:00 PM
From: $Mogul	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1794

marketwatch.newsalert.com Red Hat IPO soars 286 pct despite rocky IPO market Reuters Story - August 11, 1999 16:37 (adds details, analyst, executive comments, previous New York) By Therese Poletti SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Red Hat Inc. stock more than tripled after its initial public offering Wednesday, as excitement over the renegade Linux operating system helped it buck the downward trend in the IPO market. Red Hat, based in Durham, N.C., is the biggest distributor of the Linux operating system, a free version of the UNIX operating system that is challenging Microsoft Corp. in some areas such as the Web server market. The company raised $84 million though the offering of six million shares after pricing its IPO at $14 a share, the top of its price range. Late Tuesday, Goldman Sachs, the lead underwriter, raised the price range to $12-$14 from $10-$12. Red Hat's shares closed up 38-1/16 to 52-1/16 in very heavy volume of almost 18 million shares on the NASDAQ. Red Hat's surge was an anomaly Wednesday and other IPOs did not fare as well, posting much smaller gains. Mortgage.com was a "broken" IPO, falling below its offering price on Wednesday. The market for Internet-related IPOs has deteriorated in recent days. Many offerings are being scaled back or put on hold by their underwriters as analysts have said the window for Internet-related IPOs may be closing for now. But in Red Hat's case, investors were apparently enthused about the emergence of the Linux operating system. "This has zero to do with the IPO market. It reinforces that when the broad Internet market settles down to better valuations, investors will be there for the right stocks at the right prices," said David Menlow of the IPO Financial Network in Millburn, N.J. At the LinuxWorld trade show in San Jose, Calif., the second major trade show this year to focus on the Linux operating system, many eyes were glued to computer screens, watching Red Hat's stock price, industry executives said. "Every single computer has the E*Trade screen up," said Larry Augustin, chief executive of VA Linux Systems Inc., a developer of computer systems and servers running Linux. "I think people are pretty happy. It's almost like a Wall Street referendum on Linux." The quirky Linux community has grown up out of the open source community, where developers share their software and its source code over the Internet, with the goal of creating the best software by sharing bug fixes, upgrades and improvements. Red Hat and other Linux distributors package Linux and sell it, and offer service and support for the software that is not owned by any one company. The Linux kernel, the core of the operating system, was developed by Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds, who manages any updates to the operating system, which are made by a far-flung group of programmers. Red Hat also has an impressive group of investors, ranging from Intel Corp. , to International Business Machines Corp. to Compaq Computer Corp.. At the LinuxWorld trade show this week, more major computer makers continued to announce support for Linux and more products were introduced for Linux.