Chicago Sun Times
June 20, 2000
BY HOWARD WOLINSKY BUSINESS REPORTER
The much-anticipated public share offering for divine interVentures, the Lisle Internet holding company, has been scheduled for next Monday or Tuesday, according to federal securities filings.
Another Chicago tech company, Click Commerce Inc., also is planning its initial public offering next week, sources said. Only one tech company, Coolsavings.com, has gone public here since March, when prices of technology stocks slumped, and the IPO market turned hostile.
In recent weeks, however, the market for tech stocks has become substantially more hospitable, and Monday's 129.27 point gain in the Nasdaq brought the index to within 90 points of wiping out all its losses for the year.
Divine plans to sell 14.3 million shares at $13 to $15 to raise up to $214 million.
Divine, founded by software mogul Andrew J. "Flip" Filipowski, is bucking the trend at a time when many tech start-ups have postponed or withdrawn IPOs.
Filipowski recently fired his lead investment bank, Credit Suisse First Boston, which didn't want to take divine public until the fall. But Credit Suisse this week is scheduled to take public Handspring, a competitor to Palm.
Robertson Stephens Inc. will lead the divine IPO, which will take place just before the Federal Reserve Bank decides whether to raise interest rates, an event that can affect the stock market.
Filipowski, who is on a "road show" now to promote the offering to influential investors, told the Chicago Sun-Times earlier that Robertson Stephens and other affiliated lenders think divine "will stand out as a quality deal in a period of time when there is a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace and only the best of the best companies really should be going public."
He said his company is "burning" cash at a rate of $5 million a month and has about $100 million on hand.
Click Commerce, which builds business-to-business extranets for corporations, plans to offer 5 million shares at $9 to to $11 each, raising up to $55 million.
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. is leading the IPO. Click Commerce declined comment.
A spokeswoman for Open Port, the Chicago developer of an Internet platform for communications services, said her company has postponed its IPO until late July. Open Port plans to offer 4 million shares at $10 to $12 each, raising up to $48 million.
Funds will be used to repay debt and expand the business. Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown Inc. is leading the IPO.
Since the market plunged in March, Coolsavings.com, the Chicago e-marketing company, is the only local tech company to go public. Its 3.3 million shares closed at $7 on May 18, the day of the IPO. It dropped to a low of $3.06 1/4 and closed Monday at $6.
Chase H&Q led the IPO.
Before the IPO market tumbled, analysts were predicting 50 IPOs could take place this year for Chicago companies.
The year started out with a bang with a record four IPOs in February for local companies--Lante Corp., Apropos Technology, Inforte Corp. and e-Loyalty. That week produced more IPOs than in all of 1997 and 1998, when three tech companies went public in each year. Ten companies here went public in 1999.
IPOs are pending for Cabot Microelectronics, Commerx, Comdisco Ventures and
Playboy.com. DigitalWork.com and Participate.com recently withdrew IPOs.
Back
to top