Word: ipos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Wall Street has a zillion ways to deal you out. You never got a chance at the Netscape IPO? Of course not: hot stock offerings are reserved for big-bucks investors. Couldn't make sense of Intel's latest gibberish on chip demand next quarter? Sure you couldn't: important details get explained in exclusive conference calls. No matter how small investors try to level the field, it always ends up tilted. Get ready for another uphill climb. In the coming weeks, companies will begin reporting second-quarter results, and some stocks will react in ways that defy logic...
Will Wall Street buy? New York's big-money mandarins have been snubbing Silicon Valley of late, a chill exemplified by Wired Ventures' humiliating failure to float its own IPO last summer. "The new-issues market is not particularly strong right now, particularly for tech stocks," says Standard & Poor's analyst Robert Natale. "Amazon will be an indication of whether bellwether technology stocks can find an audience...
...whether bellwether technology stocks deserve one. Though Amazon isn't yet profitable (what self-respecting Internet IPO candidate is?), its revenues have soared from just half a million in '95 to $16 million in '96. But high-tech veterans laugh, often bitterly, at the idea that bringing a superior product to market early might guarantee success. A good Web concept draws sincere flatterers like flies. Already the Complete Guide to Online Bookstores Web page offers links to some 200 sites, from biggies like the British-based Internet Book Shop to fringe dwellers like Tales to Tell and Bloody Dagger Books...
Bezos scoffs at the B&N challenge, assuring the world--before descending into his required pre-IPO cone of silence--that Amazon's paper-thin overhead and laser-like Web focus will make it difficult for anyone to match it on price. Amazon doesn't carry the hefty cost of those comfy B&N superstores; for the most part, it just orders titles from warehousers and publishers on your behalf...
...begins the great Web retailing bout: nimble new-media entrepreneurs in this corner, lumbering old-media giants in the other. The Amazon IPO, nervously timed to precede Barnes & Noble's online debut, will help divine which contender Wall Street expects to land the first blow...