Caldera raises range for Tuesday debut

Caldera Systems (Proposed ticker: CALD), which had planned to debut Friday, raised its price range and will now price Monday night for trading Tuesday.

The provider of the Linux operating system and support upped its range Friday to $10-12, from an original estimate of $7-9.

The raised range of Caldera's five million shares signals strong demand for the offering, which may enjoy the Linux euphoria that vaulted Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT) and VA Linux (Nasdaq: LNUX) shares.

But Caldera, which recently settled a lawsuit with Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), may not see the first day gains of VA Linux, which set a record courtesy of Wall Street's Linux love affair.

The company is coming out on the tail-end of the Linux trend, and its focus on e-business hasn't yielded great financials. For the year ending Oct. 31, Caldera's sales were $3 million with a loss of $9.36 million.

Caldera faces competition from other providers of Linux operating systems, such as Corel (Nasdaq: CORL), MacMillan, Red Hat, SuSE and TurboLinux. It also competes with more established companies including IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL), the company said.

Robertson Stephens is the lead underwriter for the offering.