Lexar, Synquest IPOs dead on arrival
Lexar (Nasdaq: LEXR), a maker of digital film, closed unchanged at 8 in its initial public offering Tuesday.
Lexar priced 6.5 million shares at $8 a piece, well below their range of $10 to $12 a share.
The company also operates PrintRoom.com, which it acquired in January. At the Web site, digital camera users can submit their digital images for over the Internet and receive a photographic prints in the mail.
Like most new companies, Lexar is losing money; for the year ended September 31, the company had a net loss of $6.96 million on revenue of $29.22 million, as opposed to a loss of $15.28 million on revenue of $7.61 million in 1998.
The company is currently involved in litigation with SanDisk Corp. (Nasdaq: SNDK), its primary competitor. The Federal District Court has found that some of Lexar's products, which account for about 80 percent of revenues, infringe one of SanDisk's patents.
Though Lexar said it will contest the claim, it has begun the redesign of its questioned products, and plans to ship them prior to the conclusion of the trial, which is set to start October 23, according to the company's filing with the SEC.
Lead underwriter for the deal is Chase H&Q. Co-managers are J.P. Morgan and SG Cowen.
Synquest priced 5 million shares at $7 each, for a much smaller offering than the company had announced last week, when it was slated to offer 7.2 million shares for between $9 and $11 each.
The company, which makes software for managing and analyzing supply chain data, had revenue of $23.3 million in 1999, and a loss of $19.6 million.
Lead underwriter for the deal is Bear Stearns. Co-managers include J.P. Morgan and Wit SoundView. >