InSilicon sees first-day gains

InSilicon (Nasdaq: INSN) rose nearly 80 percent in its IPO debut Wednesday.

The spin-off of Phoenix Technology's (Nasdaq: PTEC) semiconductor intellectual property unit saw shares close at 21 9/16, up 9 9/16 in their first day of public trading. The company priced 3.5 million shares at $12, just above their range of $9 to $11 a share.

InSilicon licenses semiconductor intellectual property to chipmakers, saving on research-and-development costs by using the technology to design complex system-on-a-chip components.

For the year ended December 30, InSilicon had a net loss of $12.1 million on revenue of $18.9 million, compared to a loss of $7.1 million on revenue of $8.8 million for 1998.

The company's separation from Phoenix will mean it is unable to obtain goods, services, technology, facilities and other items at prices as favorable as those it had before the separation, the company said in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

InSilicon's competitors include other merchant semiconductor intellectual property, or SIP, suppliers, such as the Mentor Graphics' (Nasdaq: MENT), Inventra Division, Synopsys (Nasdaq: SNPS), Enthink and VAutomation; and suppliers of application specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, such as LSI Logic (NYSE: LSI), and the ASIC divisions of IBM (NYSE: IBM), Lucent (NYSE: LU), Toshiba and NEC.

The company said it also competes with the internal development groups of large, vertically integrated semiconductor and systems companies, such as Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HWP).

Robertson Stephens is the company's lead underwriter.

Another IPO on tap for today is PartsBase.com (Nasdaq: PRTS). The company priced at the top of its range for trading. The online marketplace for companies to buy and sell new, used and overhauled aviation parts and products tagged 3.5 million shares at $13 each. Its original range had been lowered to $11 to $13 a share.

The company's financial data looked like it was missing a row of zeroes. For the year ended December 31, the company had revenue of just $362,224, with loss of $7.8 million. In 1998, the company lost $148,121 on revenue of $3,504.

The company has an agreement with Tradex Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Ariba, Inc. (Nasdaq: ARBA), to install and implement customized software that will allow for seamless online transactions.

Lead underwriter for the deal is Cruttendon Roth.