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To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (84761)	11/21/1999 7:42:00 PM
From: Robert Rose	Respond to of 164684

Sunday November 21, 6:56 pm Eastern Time IPO VIEW-Feeding frenzy ends, late-year lull sets in By Monica Summers NEW YORK, Nov 21 (Reuters) - The new issues floodgate seems to have closed following two fruitful weeks in the initial public offerings market, but analysts still think one or two deals may stir things up before the end of the century. The first half of November saw a record amount of proceeds raised by initial public offerings, with some analysts expecting the trend to continue through the New Year while others see the IPO feeding frenzy trickling off before 2000. ``I think it's been a lucky week especially coming off last week,' said Tom Taulli, an analyst at Internet.com, referring to the week of Nov. 15, during which IPOs raised $3.0 billion in proceeds with the help of Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HWP - news) spinoff Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A - news). ``This IPO market is bigger than people think and it will be a lot bigger next year with retail investors definitely being a factor before the institutional game,' Taulli said. Only ten deals are tentatively on the calendar for this week, dampened by the Thanksgiving holiday, with an estimated $555.7 million expected to be raised, according to Thomson Financial Securities Data, small change compared to the $12 billion in net proceeds raised in the previous two weeks. The week of Nov. 7 marked the best week the IPO market had ever seen with 19 deals raking in a record-setting $9.0 billion in net proceeds, fueled by United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE:UPS - news) raising $5.47 billion with its 109.4 million share offering. ``UPS was an anomaly,' said Kennan Pollack, an analyst with Hoover's Online. ``That was just an enormous offering that's going to throw off all the rest of the averages for the year, especially when you have that in the same week as you have Charter Communications Inc. (NasdaqNM:CHTR - news) at $3.7 billion.' Pollack said the UPS and Charter deals alone raised more money than is normally raised in an entire week that might be saturated by several strong deals. ``Agilent was also big this week,' Pollack said. ``And if you pull out these really large deals I think the average offering is slightly higher than maybe it was a year ago, but it's still pretty small.' Also last week, Internet caching company CacheFlow Inc. (NasdaqNM:CFLO - news) made its own spark with yet another strong showing for IPO market, which had about 17 deals debut. Of the 10 deals on the calendar this week, TeleCorp PCS Inc., the largest AT&T Wireless (NYSE:T - news) affiliate in the U.S., is expected to have a strong showing, analysts said. The company hopes to raise about $122.3 million in net proceeds. ``I think it's poised to be in an area that has seen such huge growth that they're in the middle of a firestorm,' Pollack said of TeleCorp's potential as a wireless services provider. ``It's an good place for them and good timing,' he said. Another hot item on the IPO ticket is OpenTV Corp., the interactive television software maker and unit of MIH Ltd. (NasdaqNM:MIHL - news) , the Dutch-listed platform operator. OpenTV lets viewers buy merchandise or conduct banking transactions through their televisions using a standard remote control. Still, despite the presence of some strong deals some analysts still said they believe the past two weeks were unusually strong for the IPO market, which normally begins to slow down toward the end of the year. ``We are close to an end,' said Irv DeGraw, research director at WorldFinanceNet.com. ``We can't keep going where every deal is doing 1,000 percent.' ``This has gotten to be a frenzy and I think with the end of the big surge, which will be in next week or so, it will be long time before a feeding frenzy builds again,' DeGraw said. As for the 30 deals that are tentatively set to debut before the end of the year, analysts expect though there may be an odd deal that has a particularly strong showing, they don't expect to see the same market mania until after the new year. ``There's not one coming out of the pipe right now that I'm aware of that's going to be huge,' Pollack said. ``That said, there could be some sleeper that crawls in there that catches us off guard.' ``Someone probably wants to be the first one out the gate to be the new benchmark for 2000,' Pollack said. ``Given how competitive this market is now and given how full it is, any kind of silly tidbit like that to get yourself mentioned is probably what these guys are doing,' he said.