Ravisent rises on underwriter upgrades, earnings

The recently public Ravisent Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: RVST), formerly Quadrant International, and Divicore, rocketed up 20 percent Wednesday following its second quarter results, and a boost from its underwriters.

Shares were up 2 1/16 to 12 1/2, up strong, but below a recent high of 19 3/16. Ravisent makes software that enables manipulation of multimedia formats such as digital versatile disk (DVD), direct broadcast satellite (DBS), digital video broadcasting (DVB) and high definition television (HDTV).

Bear Stearns, lead underwriter for its IPO announced it had initiated coverage at a 'buy" rating Wednesday. Coverage was also initiated by co-managers SG Cowen at "strong buy," and Volpe Brown Whelan at "buy" Tuesday. Five million shares debuted at $12 each for Ravisent's July 16 initial public offering.

Ravisent reported a second-quarter net loss of $300,000 or 16 cents a share for the second quarter of 1999 Tuesday, a notch above First Call's expectation of a loss of 15 cents a share. Results compare to a net loss of $10 million in the 1998 period. Results for the second quarter of 1998 include a one-time charge of $7.9 million for acquired in-process research and development in connection with the company's acquisition of Viona.

The company reported operating revenue of $11.6 million, a 139 percent increase from operating revenue of $4.9 million reported in the second quarter of 1998.

Ravisent also trumpeted the coordination of its CineMaster family of DVD decoders and MPEG-2 encoders and AMD's new Athlon processor Tuesday in a seperate press release. Other customers for its products include Compaq, Dell Computer, Gateway, Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard.