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Lazy summer week for IPOs
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July 5, 1999: 8:08 p.m. ET
Many upcoming initial offerings have been slow to divulge details
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - The IPO market looks set to slow down a bit this week while Wall Street recovers from a three-day holiday weekend, but there are still plenty of Internet and offline offerings in the pipe to tempt first-day investors.
In the last two weeks, nearly 40 companies hit the stock market selling block, making the end of June one of the busiest periods for IPOs in recent memory.
Unsteady market conditions left few breakout first-day triumphs, but few disappointments on the order of Web magazine Salon.com (SALN), which lost 5 percent on its debut day of trading two weeks ago.
However, last week showed signs that the once-invincible Internet IPO market could be catching its second wind. Ask Jeeves (ASKJ) defied the Web's otherwise sluggish recent debut performance, climbing 400 percent in its first day of trading, while even relatively unknown e-commerce provider Commerce One (CMRC) gained 40 points on its birthday, nearly tripling in value.
A week of delay
Of this week's 17 IPO candidates, six are holdovers from past weeks. Four of these are Internet companies - voice supplier Audible (ADBL), data provider Hoovers (HOOV), personalized music maker Musicmaker.com (HITS) and Web hosting firm Interliant (INIT).
Both of the other delayed debutantes come from the medical sector, as Gen Trak, which has yet to decide on a ticker symbol, makes genetic-testing kits, and National Medial Health Card (NMHC) manages health benefits for existing health plans.
Significantly, seven of the other companies waiting to hit Wall Street this week have yet to release details on their starting floats, including such basic information as the number of shares to be put on the block or the basic ranges the shares will price at.
Liquid Audio (LQID) is one of these as-yet-indeterminate IPOs. The company produces software that allows recording labels to sell music directly to consumers over the Internet in a secure digital format, bypassing the piracy problems of the controversial MP3 format.
Also in the "to be announced" category, online educator eCollege.com (ECLG) hopes to beat the leaning curve by being the first publicly-traded Internet college, and Web marketer Engage Technologies (ENGA) plans to take advantage of its selling expertise from the securities end of Wall Street.
Online insurance marketer InsWeb (INSW) is more concrete about its IPO plans, planning to offer investors 4 million shares at between $11 and $13 some time this week. The company centralizes policy information from 21 separate insurers, offering services ranging from automobile policies to life insurance.
Rounding out the Internet selections this week is HealthGate Data (HGAT), which provides medical information to physicians and other healthcare professionals. As well as providing proprietary information through a number of consumer health Internet magazines, The company offers electronic access to the New England Journal of Medicine and other professional journals.
Between the Web and the rest: techs
Alongside the usual Internet flood of IPOs, three high-tech companies are also gearing up to hit Wall Street this week.
Two are software publishers that deal primarily with other technology providers -- the most sophisticated end of the industry, but far removed from the consumer-oriented Wall Street allure of Microsoft (MSFT) or Intuit (INTU).
Continuus Software (CNSW) creates software products that allow other software developers and other technology-intensive businesses to manage their resources more effectively. While not particularly exciting to the Internet-hungry casual investor, the niche is rich enough to send $27 million Continuus' way last year, and the company has little direct competition.
Divicore (DVCR), on the other hand, could get a lift from its association with the hot multimedia industry. The company supplies digital audio and video software to computer makers that include Compaq (CPQ), Dell (DELL), and Gateway (GTW), and is currently working on a software-only digital video (DVD) method for encoding video content directly on personal computers.
In the networking field, Splitrock Services (SPLT) sells access to its advanced broadband fiber-optic network to Internet providers and telecommunications companies. With such major players as AT&T (T), MCI WorldCom (WCOM), Sprint (FON) and Cable & Wireless (CWP), the market is extremely competitive, and the company expects competition to intensify as the Internet grows.
Other than this week's technology trio, the offline IPO calendar looks a bit stark. CRC-Evans International is laying its own debut pipeline - the company makes pipeline-construction equipment, a business in which it earned $2.3 million last year on total sales of $64.4 million. The company has yet to pick a ticker symbol.
On the biotech side, Biopure (BPUR) develops oxygen-delivery drugs which mimic the function of red blood cells and so can serve as "artificial blood." Despite their innovative nature, the company's products have as yet been slow to find their niche in the medical establishment, leaving Biopure operating at a $30 million annual loss on revenue of a little over $1 million.
Finally, Nelson Communications (NCI) could help Biopure out, as the company provides pharmaceutical marketing services. The drug-marketing field represents a $4.6 billion market in the United States alone, of which Nelson has claimed a $126 million-a-year chunk. 
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