|
IPOs face summer reruns
|
 |
July 18, 1999: 5:46 p.m. ET
Seeming Web recovery prompts delayed IPOs to dare market again
By Staff Writer Robert Scott Martin
|
NEW YORK (CNNfn) - In a scenario familiar to inveterate television watchers, this week's IPO calendar is filled with names and faces we've seen before. Several companies that previously delayed their initial airings on Wall Street are set to try again over the next few days.
Many of these reruns are coming from the Internet side of the market, where a cloudy outlook last quarter prompted a number of postponements and outright IPO cancellations. However, the seeming return of the "blockbuster Internet IPO" has given a boost to the Web sector, encouraging online offerings back into the pipeline.
Among these Internet repeats are online financial data provider Hoover's (HOOV), which is majority-owned by Warner Books and is hence a cousin of CNNfn.com, e-mail provider JFAX.com (JFAX), online music distributor MP3.com (MPPP) and Internet billing service Princeton eCom (ECOM).
Internet marketing firm Engage Technologies (ENGA) plans to join these dilatory hopefuls on the Street this week with an offering of 6 million shares, priced between $9 and $11. The company provides Web sites with advertising software and services, enabling them to more accurately gauge both their own readership and broad demographic trends.
Interactive Pictures (IPIX) has developed an "immersive photographic" technology that enables Web users to interact with imagery in a three-dimensional or "virtually real" manner. The company has formed several far-reaching alliances with IBM (IBM), Kodak (EK) and others to make this technology an industry standard.
Bringing the U.S. heartland online is the goal of both Voyager.net (VOYN) and Talk City (TCTY). Voyager is a traditional Internet service provider with a quarter-million subscribers, largely in the Midwest, which the company believes is under-served at the present time. Talk City, on the other hand, is a family-oriented Web community provider, offering users targeted information and opportunities for personal networking and self-expression.
Rounding out the Net schedule this week is Net2Phone (NTOP), which has a strong toehold in the burgeoning Internet telephony market, allowing users to place calls through computer networks with ordinary phones. The company currently has a quarter of the approximately 1 million Internet-dialing subscriber base, bringing in $12 million in revenues last year.
From telephones to lingerie
In a slightly more traditional area of the communications sector, Convergent Communications (CONV) and Cortelco Systems (CORT) both market data and voice transmission services to the owners of small and medium-sized businesses. At about half the size of Convergent, Cortelco is the smaller of the two companies, but is closer to being profitable with a loss of only $133,000 last year. Convergent, on the other hand, is large - revenue came in at $61 million last year - but operates at a much wider annual loss of $50 million.
Be (BEOS), the brainchild of one-time Apple Computer (AAPL) ideologue Jean-Louis Gassee, supports a computer operating system tailored for digital-media servers and Internet appliances. As such, the company competes in a fiercely contested market that it admits "has been dominated by Microsoft, which has significantly greater financial and marketing resources than we do."
Elsewhere in the computing field, network-memory manufacturer Gadzoox (ZOOX) is confidently approaching Wall Street this week, having doubled the starting price of its IPO to $18-20 per share. NetScout Systems (NSCT), meanwhile, creates products that help computer makers and network administrators gauge the performance of their systems. Its starting price has yet to be set.
On the biotech side, hemoglobin-substitute maker Biopure (BPUR) is a holdover from earlier in the year making another attempt at Wall Street.
The rest of the week's IPO calendar is, as always, a mixed bag. HCI Direct (HCD) markets women's stockings, a profitable business that earned the company $13.4 million last year on revenue of $198 million, while American National Can Group (CAN) is the second largest maker of aluminum cans in the world. 
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
