Anything to Track?

With the winds of war in the Mideast and a plunging Nasdaq, it is hard to
make a compelling case for a successful IPO market. In fact, there is a
very good chance there will be no IPOs hitting market for at least a couple
weeks.

Already, the IPO market is coming under tremendous pressure. For example,
Delcath Systems and the New York Times Digital tracking stock were both
pulled. Oh, and DrugAbuse Sciences cut its IPO range to $8-$9.

And for those companies that did go public this week, it has been, well,
abusive. Several have fallen below their offering prices.
Even the Synplicity IPO, a
company that focuses on communications and fiber optics, saw only a 42%
increase (aren’t these supposed to increase by at least 100%?)

Okay, despite all this, let’s see if we can make some guesses as to which
companies have a chance for the next week.

Actually, there appears to be only one (although, there’s a good chance that
some of the IPOs planned for this week will instead try to hit the markets
for next week). The company is called
Ixia.

Basically, the company develops systems to analyze data traffic (you know,
from the optical and electrical networks). In all, the company has been
able to snag 170 customers, such as Cisco, AT&T and Broadcom.

Ixia has had substantial growth. In 1998, revenues were a mere $4.9
million. By 1999, revenues surged to $24.5 million. And, for the first six
months of 2000, revenues were an impressive $28.3 million.

True, the optical IPOs have been losing their luster recently. Although,
Ixia does have quite a bit of traction and should do quite well.

The lead underwriter is Merrill Lynch and the price range is $10-$12 (the
company intends to issue 5.5 million shares). The proposed ticker symbol is
XXIA.