“Red Hat shares, trading under the symbol RHAT, were priced
initially at 14 but quickly began to climb. The success of the
first day gives the company a capital value of around $3 billion.
By comparison, most recent IPOs have been rather tepid, with share
prices rising only a few dollars or sinking below the asking
price.”
The company released 6 million shares under the sale. The
stock offering was designed to raise between $60 million and $72
million to finance Red Hat’s expanding operations. It has
instead rasied about $84 million.”
“The Red Hat IPO has been seen as not only a seminal event for
the Durham, North Carolina-based company but also an important test
of the open source operating system’s broad appeal. Red Hat’s
success could pave the way for VA Linux Systems, Caldera Systems,
Linuxcare, and Cygnus Solutions to go public as well.”
“…questions about the overall business prospects of Linux
companies will likely come up. Among them, should Red Hat be
considered a software developer or service/consulting company? And
how successful can a company be when it doesn’t control its basic
software code and similar products are available for free?”
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