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Technology Stocks : Marimba, Inc. (MRBA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: puborectalis who wrote (86)	5/1/1999 2:15:00 AM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 240

Marimba pushes to market By Owen Thomas Red Herring Online February 17, 1999 After a long sojourn in and out of the public eye, Marimba has made a decisive step to the public markets. As first reported in the Red Herring Online, since late last year, Marimba has been preparing documents for an initial public stock offering led by investment banks Morgan Stanley (MWD) and Hambrecht & Quist (HQ). On Friday, it filed an S-1 prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Based on the filing fee it paid, the company may seek to raise as much as $56.4 million in its offering. In addition to Morgan Stanley and Hambrecht & Quist, Credit Suisse First Boston and BT Alex. Brown will also underwrite the deal. Marimba will trade on the Nasdaq exchange under the proposed symbol MRBA. MARIMBA GROWS UP Little in the document comes as a surprise to those who have followed Marimba's business closely in recent years. But the company today bears little resemblance to the hotly hyped startup that graced the pages of technology magazines in 1996 and 1997. Instead, its sole product, Castanet, has found several productive niches in the management of distributed, networked applications. Deals with Corio and Onsale are representative of Marimba's new role as a little-noticed part of Web applications' infrastructure. A good part of the company's business comes from a deal with Tivoli, an IBM (IBM) subsidiary that offers software for simplifying management of PCs in corporate networks. The Tivoli relationship accounted for 40 percent of the company's revenues in the third quarter of 1998, and 19 percent in the fourth quarter. A nagging patent dispute with Novadigm (NVDM), which erupted in late 1997, has still not reached resolution. Marimba's filings detail the risks of a negative outcome to that suit -- which could be substantial, as Novadigm competes with Marimba in the application distribution market. HOW MUCH? In 1998, the company's revenues were $17.1 million, with a loss of $5.7 million. In 1997, Marimba took in $5.6 million and lost $7.7 million. The company's surging revenues in 1998 accounted for an odd side note in the S-1 filing. Marimba raised $18.5 million in its last venture capital financing round; as of December 31, 1998, it had $4.1 million invested in corporate and government bonds. "We are limited to investing in high-grade debt instruments," says Marimba CFO Fred Gerson, echoing a document in the filing that detailed restrictions on Marimba's investments. In hindsight, Marimba may have raised more money than needed. But the company's four founders -- CEO Kim Polese, chief technology officer Arthur van Hoff, and senior engineers Jonathan Payne and Sami Shaio -- each own approximately 13 percent of the company's shares, indicating that they still maintain majority control of the company. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers owns approximately 15 percent of the company, including most of the preferred shares. Oracle COO Ray Lane, who sits on Marimba's board of directors, also owns some preferred stock, as does Marimba's vice president of worldwide sales, Steven Williams -- the sole employee to own anything but common stock. customers.....http://www.marimba.com/solutions/solution.htm