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Technology Stocks : Ciena (CIEN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gary Korn who wrote (1400)	2/21/1998 10:11:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12623

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.