It wasn’t quite like the old old says when an IPO created a feeding frenzy on Day One. But it also wasn’t like the newer old days when a dot-com IPO created yawns--or maybe even caused investors to run in the opposite direction.
Online close-out retailer Overstock.com Inc. sold 3 million shares at $13 a share today in an IPO. The company trades under the symbol OSTK on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. By the end of the day the stock had risen by about 25 cents a share--decent but again not like the doubling or tripling or more in one day that dot-com stocks used to experience.
CEO Patrick Bryne says the stock price will take care of itself while the company stays focused on taking care of the business. "In the short term, the market is a voting machine; in the long term it`s a scale," he says. "We offer a great value to consumers, and ultimately, in one way or another, that gets rewarded in the marketplace."
Salt Lake City-based Overstock filed for its IPO in March, saying it will use the proceeds for expansion and debt reduction. In SEC filings for the IPO, the company said its objective is "to leverage the Internet to become the dominant closeout solution for holders of brand-name merchandise, allowing them to dispose of that excess merchandise discretely and with high recovery value."
The co-managing underwriters of the IPO are WR Hambrecht + Co. and Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. LLC.
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