Selectica soars up 371 percent in debut

Jan. 2, 2002 4:43 p.m. PT

Selectrica stormed up 111 15/64, or 371 percent, to 141 15/64 Friday in its initial public offering.

Selectica (Nasdaq: SLTC) previously raised its IPO price range to $23 to $25 a share. That was more than double the original estimate of $9 to $11 a share.

The offering, obviously in high demand, may approach the success of competitor FirePond's (Nasdaq: FIRE) IPO.

For the nine months ended Dec. 31, the company had a net loss of $13.3 million on revenue of $9.1 million, compared to a net loss of $4.7 million on revenue of $1.9 million for the same period in 1998.

Besides FirePond, Selectica's principal competitors include Calico Commerce (Nasdaq: CLIC), and Trilogy Software. BAAN (Nasdaq: BAANF), Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), SAP (NYSE: SAP) and Siebel Systems (Nasdaq: SEBL) also offer software similar to Selectica's Internet selling system and may intensify their efforts in its market, the company said in an SEC filing.

Credit Suisse First Boston leads the underwriting team. Thomas Weisel and USB Piper Jaffray are co-managers.