AvantGo makes solid debut

AvantGo (Nasdaq: AVGO) shares closed up $8 to $20 Wednesday in its initial public offering.

It offered 5.5 million shares at $12 a piece. The provider of content for wireless devices had given a range of $9 to $11 a share.

It's a similar offering to Omnisky (Nasdaq: OMNY), which fared well in its debut last week, said Kenan Pollack, of IPO Central, who chose AvantGo as one of the week's more promising deals.

The company makes mobile infrastructure software for content delivery on handheld devices and Internet-enabled phones. Incorporated in 1997, it shipped its first software product in May 1998. The young company had a net loss of $9.22 million for the year ended December 31, on $2.89 million in revenue, as compared to a loss of $2.60 million in 1998, on revenue of $387,000.

Most of the company's revenue comes from its enterprise software, which accounted for over half of revenues for the year ended December 31. The licensing of its AvantGo Enterprise software products to American Express Travel-Related Services, Inc., Ford Motor Company and McKessonHBOC, accounted for 8 percent, 8 percent and 37 percent of total revenues for the 6 months ended June 30, 2000.

In the enterprise software and services division, AvantGo competes with Palm (Nasdaq: PALM), Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), Aether Systems (Nasdaq: AETH), OmniSky (Nasdaq: OMNY) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)

The deal's lead underwriter is CS First Boston; co-managers are Merrill Lynch and CIBC World Markets.
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