OPTICAL OPENS EYES WITH STRONG IPO.Byline: Robert Monroe Staff Writer CHATSWORTH - Optical Communication Products proved Friday that the market for IPOs is not dead but merely more selective. The stock rose 62.5 percent from its initial $11 asking price, closing at $17.88 and trading as high as $20.50 in its Nasdaq debut. The company and its lead underwriter Lead underwriter The head of a syndicate of financial firms that are sponsoring an initial public offering of securities or a secondary offering of securities. Could also apply to bond issues. , UBS UBS Union Bank of Switzerland UBS United Bible Societies UBS United Blood Services UBS United Buying Service UBS Used Bookstore UBS University Business Services UBS Universal Building Society (UK) UBS Ulaanbaatar Broadcasting System Warburg, beat the odds many analysts had set for it, pleasantly surprising some. ``It's doing better than I expected really,'' said Steven Tuen, an analyst at IPO (Initial Public Offering) The first time a company offers shares of stock to the public. While not a computer term per se, many founders, employees and insiders of computer companies have found this acronym more exciting than any tech term they ever heard. Value Monitor who thought it would be affected by the weak optical networking Communications between computers, telephones and other electronic devices using light. An optical network is far more reliable and has far greater potential transmission capacity than networking in the electrical domain. See optical fiber. sector of late. ``It's probably because the offering price of $11 was attractive.'' The bargain price of the company's 10.5 million shares and its low trading volume Trading volume The number of shares transacted every day. As there is a seller for every buyer, one can think of the trading volume as half of the number of shares transacted. That is, if A sells 100 shares to B, the volume is 100 shares. point to a continued new sobriety among investors hung over from dot-com mania. A profitable company already, Optical resembles Ixia Ix´i`a n. 1. (Bot.) A South African bulbous plant of the Iris family, remarkable for the brilliancy of its flowers. Noun 1. , a Calabasas maker of optical network testing equipment that held a successful IPO last month. Ben Holmes, founder of ipoPros.com, a Boulder, Colo., firm, noted that a number of IPOs planned for this time have been scuttled, their backers not daring to face fickle fick·le adj. Characterized by erratic changeableness or instability, especially with regard to affections or attachments; capricious. [Middle English fikel, from Old English ficol, investors. The few companies that stayed around benefited from the same pool of investment money looking to be spent prudently. ``What's left is a very selective market doing a limited number of deals,'' Holmes said, noting the stock was still less than $20 at the end of the day. ``These are very sane, very comfortable premiums.'' To Yusuf Haque, an analyst with IPO Maven, the offer and its conservative trading volume of 13.7 million shares reminded him of the old days. January's first-day volume of 724 Solutions, for instance, was four times the number of shares initially offered, a sign of hype trading, Haque said. Optical is evidence those days are over. ``It's very encouraging when you see an IPO come through the first day with low trading volumes,'' he said. |
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