Internet IPO Market’s Long Holiday May Be Ending

With only seven public offerings in September, the Internet IPO market appears as sluggish as ever.

But all seven ‘Net ticker debuts came in the last third of the month, and though first-day returns remain modest, the recent increased activity could indicate a more interesting – or at least busier – fall.

Last month’s top Internet IPO, not surprisingly, belonged to an infrastructure company. Investors continue to offer much more support to infrastructure plays than any other Internet category.

CoSine Communications , a seller of switches and software that enable network service providers to offer customers VPNs, firewalls and IP networking services, gained 174% in its first day of trading on Sept. 26, closing at $63.06. COSN had offered 10 million shares at $23 each.

In the past six months, there have been only 62 Internet IPOs. This compares to 162 during the same period in 1999. And even with the glut of offerings last year, average first-day gains were consistently higher than during this year’s second and third quarters.

Here are the numbers for this year and last, through September:

Average First-Day Return (By Month)

10 Best Internet Debuts of 2000

10 Worst Internet Debuts of 2000

Here are September’s Internet IPOs, listed by date, with their first-day performances:

• Sept. 21 – Zengine (ZNGN), 9%
• Sept. 21 – OmniSky (OMNY), 47%
• Sept. 26 – CoSine Communications (COSN), 174%
• Sept. 27 – AvantGo (AVGO), 67%
• Sept. 28 – University of Phoenix Online (UOPX), 27%
• Sept. 29 – Elastic Networks (ELAS), 7%
• Sept. 29 – Docent (DCNT), 66%