WILL eBAY BREATHE NEW LIFE INTO THE IPO MARKET?
In a market bereft of initial public offerings for a seemingly interminable month, eBay, an Internet company that sets up person-to-person auctions, may come to the rescue. Priced on Sept. 23 at $18 a share, the stock is expected to rise in early trading on Sept. 24. That would be the first such occurrence since the IPO market dried up after the overall market declined in July and August. The last new issue was BankFirst (BKFR), which went public Aug. 27. “A lot of people are looking at this deal as a bellwether,” says Ryan Jacob, portfolio manager of the Internet Fund. In a sign of strong demand, lead underwriter Goldman Sachs & Co. raised the price range of the offering from $14 to $16 a share to a range of $16 to $18 early on Sept. 23. It priced the deal after the market’s close, selling 3.5 million shares to clients and raising $63 million for the company. The stock will begin trading on the NASDAQ on Sept. 24. “In terms of our site, eBay is one of the most popular companies that p
