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Technology Stocks : Data Broadcasting Corp. (DBCC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Amy2D who wrote (1961)	1/3/1999 8:28:00 PM
From: Tom R. Jones	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5102

News! delayed 20 mins - disclaimerSunday January 3, 7:58 pm Eastern Time IPO VIEW-Market to get early start with cyberdeals By Holly Rosenkrantz NEW YORK, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Internet fever has breathed life into the usually-slow New Year's initial public offerings arena, with big gains on late 1998's hot cyberdeals luring investors to a broad range of scheduled offerings. ''The Internet craze is pulling everyone on the Street up by the bootstraps and adding fuel the the IPO market,'' said a member of one Wall Street syndicate desk who asked not to be named. ''The deals revving up are getting good interest, and people want to see what's next.'' One of the first Internet IPOs scheduled for early in the year is Marketwatch.com Inc., an online business news provider formed as a joint venture between CBS Corp. (NYSE:CBS - news) and Data Broadcasting Corp. (Nasdaq:DBCC - news). After the offering, the two companies will each own about 38 percent of the San Francisco-based firm's common stock, according to an IPO filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. Analysts said the $27.5-$33 million deal, tentatively slated for the week of Jan. 11, is expected to garner strong interest from online investors -- who are viewed as the reason for much of the huge gains in Internet stocks. ''The recent Internet IPOs have been driven by online investing, and a lot of the online investors apparently use the site,'' said Paul Bard, an analyst with the Renaissance IPO Fund. In addition, analysts said the CBS name behind the deal gives the Internet IPO an extra tinge of credibility. Although CBS's sports news Internet business, SportsLine USA Inc. (Nasdaq:SPLN - news), garnered lukewarm interest when it went public in November 1997, the broadcasting giant attracted wide attention when its sold a stake of its Infinity Broadcasting (NYSE:INF - news) radio unit to the public this past December. The deal, which raised $.88 billion, was the third largest U.S. launch ever. ''SportsLine didn't have much fanfare, but CBS is now becoming a veteran in this area,'' said David Menlow, president of the IPO Financial Network. In addition to the Marketwatch IPO, deals from online service provider Pacific Internet Ltd. and Allaire Corp., which makes software that helps build Web sites, are expected to garner strong demand from investors looking for Internet-related plays. Both deals had originally been scheduled for late 1998. Of course, Internet IPOs are not the only game in town. Analysts said software, biotechnology and insurance deals should all perform well in 1999. Indeed, these other industries are seen as providing new issues that have better long-term prospects than the host of Internet companies coming to market. ''There are few companies in the Internet space that have good long-terms business models,'' said Ned Brines, co-manager of the Phoenix Aggressive Growth Fund. ''That doesn't mean we won't take short-term positions. We'd be stupid not to.''