IPO's sind wieder da - zumindest in den USA

"We think the traditional enterprise software model is fundamentally flawed," said SolarWinds President Kevin Thompson. "We think it has left the IT user completely out of the equation, which is why their models don't allow you to have scale and margin."

Such bold words are the kind of thing venture capitalists like to hear, especially when backed up by numbers. SolarWinds has been profitable every year since its inception. Net income rose 44% and revenue 18% in the tough Q1.

Downturns have a way of separating the real entrepreneurs from the tourists, says Mark Heeson, president of the National Venture Capital Association.

"A lot of venture capitalists will tell you this is a very good time to be investing," said Heeson. "The entrepreneurs who are left standing at this point 18e true entrepreneurs -- they have fire in their belly, they have good ideas, they have good business sense."

Still, Heeson says it's too early to expect a new wave of VC-backed IPOs. There's been no perceptible uptick in filings, and venture capital plunged 61% in Q1. With the average IPO taking about a year to get through the system, that could slow the market for some time. Rating :
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The next milestone IPO could come from Facebook. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in an internal memo to employees in March, said his company was seeking a new chief financial officer "with public company experience who can help take us to the next stage in our growth." A Facebook spokesman at the time said that no IPO was imminent — "not even in a window of months."

DigitalGlobe is no stranger to malfunctions. The first two satellites it launched failed to reach orbit. Though the next two proved successful, that history could give investors reasonable doubt about its planned launch of WorldView-2 later this year.

"Any slip in the satellite's production schedule could mean the loss of a launch slot, a delay of several months in getting to orbit, and shareholders' wrath," wrote Morningstar analyst Mike Ford-Taggart in a research report.

On the upside, the launch could bring another spike in business. Ford-Taggart projects that the recession will keep sales flat this year, but next year might be a different story.

"It's going to be mid-year 2009 pretty soon so people are going to be looking into 2010 for companies whose top line revenue has a chance of popping," Francis Gaskins, president of IPO Desktop, wrote in an e-mail.

Both DigitalGlobe and GeoEye have room to grow, thanks to rising demand for their services, Bard says. Last month, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said the agency will outsource more of its digital mapping to private vendors to save money and fill gaps in its archives.

DigitalGlobe has another risk in common with every other IPO so far this year: Very few of the proceeds are actually going into the company. Insiders have walked away with most of the funds raised by the offerings.

Insider selling often signals a lack of confidence in the company's future. But Sahir Sumeli, vice-chairman of energy and clean technology for law firm Mintz Levin, says this year's trend has more to do with how the deals are structured.

"If you look at the deals, there have been two spin-offs, and the rest are private-equity backed," he said. "They didn't buy a company with no revenues and slowly grow it up. These are businesses that throw off a lot of cash."

www.cnbc.com/id/30827289/site/...quote%7Ctext%7C&par=yahoo

an seinem ersten Handelstag und erreicht eine Marktkapitalisierung von 400 Milllionen:

www.marketwatch.com/story/...sts-on-opentable-ipo?siteid=yhoof

Internet Capital ist mit 34% an Starcite beteiligt, das eine ähnliche Struktur und vom Umsatz her die gleiche Größe aufweist.

www.starcite.com

Furthermore, the other two VC-backed IPOs this year, DigitalGlobe (DGI) and Bridgepoint Education (BPI), started strong on their first day, but tapered off recently. Shares were up 13% and 6% after one day, but are now down 4% and 5% respectively.

Narrow pipeline. It will likely take a while to rebuild the pipeline of VC-backed companies that are ready to be taken public.

Typically, VC investors take the proceeds from companies go public, funnel them back into new companies, and the cycle continues.

But the recession put the brakes on VC-backed IPOs with many VC firms opting to hold onto companies until market conditions turned. Venture capitalists invested just $3 billion in 549 companies during the first quarter of 2009. Last year, they invested an average of $7 billion in 975 deals per quarter, and in 2007, they invested $7.7 billion in 1,000 deals each quarter.

Mendel thinks that the IPO market will recover, but not before late 2010. She said an investment level of $6 billion to $8 billion per quarter would signal a healthy level of investment.

"We don't want it to be too big," she said. "We went down that road before, and look what happened."

Of the 80 companies that have registered for IPOs over the past year, only 19 are VC-backed. But on the bright side, 10 of those were registered in the past two months.

Eight are biotech companies, and many are clean energy related, including Nexsan Technologies, which makes energy efficient data storage systems; First Wind Holdings, which specializes in wind energy products; and A123 Systems, which is developing lithium ion batteries for electric cars.

Other notable VC-backed IPOs in the pipeline include ePocrates, a company that makes medical software that can give physicians drug interactions, disease and laboratory information on their smartphones. LogMeIn gives users remote access to their computers, and NextG Networks is designing more aesthetically pleasing cell phone towers that also improve wireless capabilities.

Revenue soared 36% to $55.8 million last year. The company's margins haven't been as noteworthy, though OpenTable has squeezed out a pre-tax profit in each of the past three years.

Ultimately, this is just another reason for investors to begin warming up to the IPO pipeline. Look at what else we've seen this year:

2009 IPOs
IPO
5/20/09
Change

Mead-Johnson (NYSE: MJN)
$24.00
$28.58
19%

Changyou.com (Nasdaq: CYOU)
$16.00
$29.42
84%

Bridgepoint Education (NYSE: BPI)
$10.50
$10.11
(4%)

Rosetta Stone (NYSE: RST)
$18.00
$25.00
39%

DigitalGlobal (NYSE: DGI)
$19.00
$18.10
(5%)

SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI)
$12.50
$13.75
10%

Open Table
$20.00
n/a
 

Most of the 2009 debutantes are trading comfortably ahead of their original price tags. Online educator Bridgepoint Education was soaring this morning, so last week's DigitalGlobal IPO is the only one underwater at this point.

As for OpenTable, just the act of going public this morning is beneficial. Fence-sitting restaurants will now know that they are dealing with a financially viable company, and one has to imagine that traffic to OpenTable.com will surge this week as the company finds itself in the news.

So, well done on the IPO, OpenTable. Now let's hope that there's also an after-dinner mint waiting.

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