NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
Somebody forgot to tell technology IPO investors that the summer doldrums are here.
Salesforce.com (CRM: Research, Estimates), a Web-based customer-relationship software company, went public Wednesday morning and wound up closing about 56 percent higher than its offering price.
This successful IPO comes on the heels of a couple other lucrative tech debuts. On Friday, educational-software developer Blackboard (BBBB: Research, Estimates) went public and surged 43 percent.
Online jeweler Blue Nile (NILE: Research, Estimates) has also been a gem, with shares up nearly 60 percent since their IPO last month. (For more on Blue Nile, read "Shine on, crazy diamond").
Of course, this is all just a prelude to the most anticipated IPO in years, the debut of Google, expected later this year.
Salesforce.com's first day pop was slightly better than with what some were hoping for -- IPOfinanical.com president David Menlow said he was expecting as much as a 50 percent gain.
No more triple digit pops...but that's OK
But even these heady gains fall well short of the rocket shots common in the late 1990s.
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"This is a little more normalized environment," said Ben Holmes, managing member with Protege Funds, an investment firm that focuses on IPOs. "You're not going to see stocks coming out of the gate doubling and tripling anymore."
Still, Salesforce.com's gains were even more impressive considering that the company had boosted its offering price twice in the past week. It originally planned to sell the shares at a range of $7.50 to $8.50 and then bumped the range to $9 to $10 before finally pricing at $11.
In addition, Salesforce.com's IPO -- delayed several times -- has been controversial. The company was forced to restate some of its prior results and also came under fire from the Securities and Exchange Commission after CEO Marc Benioff spoke about the company's prospects in media interviews, a violation of the so-called quiet period that comes before a public offering.
That shares gained so much despite this bad press was yet another sign that investors are once again starting to show interest in younger tech companies.
"The tech IPO market is going through a minor renaissance," said Menlow. "This is another encouraging foundation step."
More to the market than Google
Looking forward, Menlow said that everybody is waiting to see how Google will do. However, he said he'd be wary of the stock, even though he thinks the fundamentals are sound, since Google is pricing its IPO through a Dutch auction, which will allow the average investor to bid on how much they want to ante up for the stock.
Menlow said this is undoubtedly a fairer way of allocating shares to the investing public, but it sets up the possibility that people will overpay for fear of getting left out.
"You have to love the company itself. It caught lightning in a bottle and is a tremendous company," Menlow said. "But where we have a problem is that emotionalism will now dictate the price of the stock."
But there are other tech IPOs on the horizon that should also generate a lot of buzz.
Online comparison shopping service, Shopping.com is on tap to go public within the next few weeks. The company is planning to sell 7.8 million shares at a range of $14 to $16 a share.
Cell phone manufacturer Motorola (MOT: Research, Estimates) is tentatively set to spin off its chip unit, Freescale Semiconductor, next month. Motorola is planning to sell 121.6 million shares of Freescale at a range of $17.50 to $19.50, possibly raising as much as $2.4 billion in the offering.
And Holmes said that based on Salesforce.com's strong unveiling, he has high hopes for RightNow Technologies, another customer relationship management software company that filed to go public last month.
It all just goes to show that there's more to the tech IPO market than Google.
"There are a few star deals out there," said Holmes. "These are a spark to the kindling and that's what we need."
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