IPOs Held Their Own on Market Roller Coaster

It didn't matter if you were famous, infamous or anonymous, the wild rides lately on the Nasdaq have produced a lot of sour stomachs. Interestingly enough, in a report done at internet.com, in the last 90 days (as of last week), about 77% of the new issues are down.

Interestingly enough, despite the volatility of the week, IPOs did fairly well.

On Tuesday, the Aurora, Ill.-based Cabot Microelectronics (CCMP), which was priced at $20 a share, closed at 24-7/8, a gain of over 24 percent. It continued upward and ended Thursday at 33-9/16. The company raised $80 million on its IPO.

Cabot Microelectronics has one product: slurries. But it is a very useful product and in high demand. Slurries are used in chemical mechanical planarization (CMP), a polishing process applied during the making of integrated circuits and hard disk drives.

The company has had net income since 1997 and had a profit of $12.3 million on its 1999 sales of $98.7 million.

Goldman, Sachs was the lead underwriter.

On Wednesday, Ulticom (ULCM) priced its 4.25 millions offerings at $13 and saw them rise to 20 for its opening. It rose slightly to 22-5/16 by Thursday.

Investors liked the fact that Ulticom actually had net income (see a trend here?) For the year ending Jan. 1, the company had made $1.6 million on $25.8 million in sales.

Ulticom, a subsidiary of Comverse Technology, provides networking signaling software for wireless, wireline and Internet communications services. While its headquarters are located in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, Ulticom has locations in the United Kingdom, and France.

Vyyo (VYYO), Cupertino, Calif.-based company, is a provider of wireless access connections to business and residential subscribers (it also has, by far, the coolest name for an IPO this week). It opened on Wednesday. Its $13.50 price jumped 85 percent to $25 by the end of the day. It continued its rise on Thursday to 27-1/16.

Banc of America Securities was the lead underwriter.

Thursday saw the wireless group continuing on its upswing, roaming in the ether. The 5.1 million-shares for i3 Mobile (IIIM) rose 56 percent to 25, up from its $16 price.

i3 Mobile is a leading provider of content to wireless devices. It now has 650,000 users on its network across major wireless platforms.

Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown was the lead underwriter.

Final Note:
Because of adverse customer feedback, Fidelity decided to deep-six its anti-flipping policy. Flipping an IPO is when an investor sells in a short period of time, usually reaping huge returns. Then again, with the IPO market cooling off, it may be tough to force investors to hold losing positions!

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