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Technology Stocks : NetLibrary Inc. - EBKS -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Xenogenetic who wrote (3)	12/12/2000 7:33:04 PM
From: Glenn Petersen	Respond to of 4

NetLibarary pulls its IPO: thestandard.com December 12, 2000, 3:21 PM PST NetLibrary Puts IPO Back on the Shelf The offering could have given the fledgling e-book business some credibility. The pullback just shows that the industry is struggling like any other. By Jennifer Greenstein E-book company NetLibrary, which announced a few months ago that it intended to raise $82 million with an IPO, said Tuesday that it has now abandoned those plans. "Given the current market conditions, we have put [the IPO] on hold," says Brian Bell, a company spokesman. "There really isn't any sort of connection between the business itself and the decision not to do the IPO right now. The decision is based strictly on markets." NetLibrary would have been one of the first major e-book companies to go public. When it filed the paperwork in August for an initial public offering, the move was regarded as a sign that the fledgling e-book industry was gaining credibility as a serious business; but these days the market for IPOs in virtually every industry looks bleak. Likewise, the exuberance surrounding e-books has cooled, especially since Stephen King put his high-profile experiment in Web publishing on hold last month. Some analysts say NetLibrary has taken a smart approach by focusing on educational uses of e-books rather than trying to sell to consumers, who so far have been less than wowed by the prospect of giving up paper books for the chance to read for pleasure on a computer screen. Last month, NetLibrary announced an agreement with Houghton Mifflin (HTN) , one of its investors, to create electronic versions of the publisher's college textbooks. "We think the real advantage of digitizing books comes from textbooks and print on demand," says Daniel O'Brien, a senior analyst with Forrester Research (FORR) . "NetLibrary is in better shape than others that are betting everything on mass consumer adoption of e-books. It's a more measured strategy." That strategy, however, is not one that the public markets seem likely to embrace in the near future. NetLibrary, which digitizes books and sells them primarily to libraries, has raised $115 million in four rounds of private financing. "NetLibrary has enough cash to operate for at least a year, and we are considering alternative sources of funding," Bell says. The company had third-quarter revenues of $4.5 million.