“… This week, probably Tuesday, Transmeta will go public,
attempting to raise as much as $234 million by selling 13 million
shares at $16 to $18 each in an initial public offering. Will
investors scoop up Transmeta’s shares in a buying frenzy, or will
they leave the stock stranded, like the fictional sailor Robinson
Crusoe, for whom the company’s flagship chip is named?“
“In January, Transmeta was on top of the world. The company had
just come out of hiding after operating in stealth mode for five
years. It garnered the most press ever seen for the launch of a new
microprocessor family. And the market for IPOs was red-hot. But the
company didn’t have any customers yet to entice investor
interest.”
“Now, Transmeta has customers, but a steady downturn in tech
stocks, including chips, has left investors skittish. Intel has
come up with its own line of low-power-consumption chips for
laptops. Independent testers have found that Transmeta’s chips,
which must translate software written for Intel chips on the fly,
run slower than comparable Intel chips.”