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Caldera Prices Its IPO
A reader writes, "Caldera has priced its IPO. See here in Wideopen for what little there is to read about it. " Summary: $7-9 expected range of price, while selling 5 million shares. Update: 02/26 01:31 by R : Slightly deeper story at News.com.
So that means it'll open to the public at what... $30? I'd really like to purchase some of this, but I don't really see it happening (not by fault of them, but by my own. Same reason I don't own any RedHat or VA).
Well, Just realized that my first sentence was the only relevant thought I had on the matter, so, I'll just take this time to congratulate them, and wish them a very well IPO.
Sorry, My dad is actually running it on his old packard bell, was too excited about being a 1st post to finish.
Hopefully this will bring in some nice cash for Caldera, to work on making a great distro for people such as my dad, who wants to run linux, but is still a little intimidated by the debian install process.
This is noting compared to linux-pets.com's expected price.
For a more in-depth look at the IPO, click here for IPO.com's filing.
What's your damage, Heather?
I don't know you guys, but when I look the icon created for Caldera, it reminds me much more of Disney than Caldera...
Look, the blue part catches my attention immediately, and it looks so much like Mickey's ear. =)
(This must be the result of working saturday mornings... my brain does not work properly in this period.)
--
Marcelo Vanzin
Marcelo Vanzin
Have you checked the stock prices on Linux stocks lately? Sure, a lot of people who got in quick made a great buck, but anybody who bought after the first month is really getting clobbered.
RedHat - opened at $7, rocketed to $151, now $68.
VA Linux - opened at $30, rocketed to $320, now at $113.
Cobalt - opened at $22, rocketed to $172, now $104.
This sends a message to Wall Street - get in fast on Linux IPO's, and then dump them on the unwitting public. It also sends a subliminal message about Linux as a whole - that it's not a long-term option, only a short-term one. (I'm not saying I agree, but that's the subliminal message.)
What's your damage, Heather?
.
Nope. Brento's prices are adjusted for the split that happened in early January. Those $45 were before the split and would be $22.5 split adjusted. Thus, even at today's pricing, that's still the triple!
> In the end it boils down to dividends...But if those companies keep year after year of steady losses and no dividends there's no way their prices will ever go up again.
Actually, not quite true either. There is one (in)famous company which never paid any dividends, but nevertheless gained value year after year. Yes, it is indeed that company that we all love to hate...
Cobalt is a great daytrading stock. I bought some end of January for 75 1/16, left for a skying holiday, and back home, I sold them for 120 1/8 ;-). Right now, it occasionnally drops back to 100 only to come back to 120 the day after. Great ride!
Marjo Wycam, Master of the Programming Arts
This is why you see things like all of Amazon's stock changing hands four times in its first week. The VC's get in at prices you wouldn't believe and get out before you can even place a trade.
Does anyone else see a partial Micky Mouse painted on a globe whenever they see that logo?
Given Disney's litigiousness, I predict a future lawsuit. :)
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is what it looked like to me, yes it does.
In related matters, it may be a not so good time for IPO's, the market in general appears to have peaked around last Dec., and economists are talking about 'soft landings' again - don't think I've heard that for several years. And I can't beleive Greenspan said he sees "no sign of inflation" with a straight face - he obviously doesn't pump his own gas into the limo! When they worry about price rises and jack up interest rates bonds perform better than stocks.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Due to Caldera's distant relationship with Novell, I thought it would be worthwhile to point out that they are rele asing NDS and GroupWise for Linux. I think something like this could hype up the value of Caldera and RedHat stocks, and might offer these companies some way to actually make money.
Its a Disney logo in disguise! check here AHHHHH!
-- dieman - Scott Dier
The police claim to have said something, but nobody still alive remembers hearing it, except for the four guys who were trying to talk their way out of prison.
The "shouted" part is your own interpolation, trying to make your story sound better even as you were writing it. Typical logic: "My version of events must be true; if it were not, I'd be a jackass, and that's unacceptable. Therefore, anything which tends to support my version must be true, so if I make stuff up, I'm really just 'remembering' facts that I haven't heard yet". Or something like that.
It's a shame you feel you have to resort to this bullshit, because the reason they started shooting was actually close enough to common sense that it convinced a jury: Diallo started pulling out his wallet (a mistake, but not bizarre or stupid: Most of us keep ID in our wallets). One of the cops slipped and fell, quite accidentally and nothing to do with Diallo. Meanwhile, one of the cops mistook Diallo's wallet for a gun (in classroom demonstrations of human perceptions under stress, people have mistaken bananas for guns) and yelled "gun". At the same time, of course, another of the cops was falling, and the rest put 0.9 and 0.7 together and got 2. The cops' story, and it is a plausible one, was that it was a coincidence and bad judgement in a tense situation, and they fucked up. Myself, I happen to think their perception of potential danger may have been considerably greater than it needed to have been, due to the fact that Diallo was black. I could be wrong about that, but I've known a couple of NYPD officers, one of them (a close relative) quite well, and it's not far-fetched. Racist attitudes are not universal among NYPD officers by any means, but they are not rare.
Finally, there is no law on the books anywhere in the United States which provides for a summary death penalty for moving when a cop says "freeze". Okay? That, in and of itself, was not sufficient cause to shoot the guy. The only case in which a cop is legally justified in using deadly force is if s/he has reason to believe that his or her life, or that of a bystander, is in immediate danger. They shot Diallo because they thought he was shooting at them: He had something dark in his hand, and one of the officers fell. There was no gunshot, obviously, but when they saw him go for his back pocket (the wallet, remember) they probably went into adrenaline overdrive: perceptions and thought processes are altered in that state.
Don't try to smear bullshit all over this: They fucked up royally and killed an innocent man. Their defense attorneys said that, and they said it themselves. It's the truth. They were acquitted because the law allows for the fact that the police are sometimes required to make snap decisions involving deadly force under great pressure, and sometimes they fuck up. When that happens, we drag them into court, make a big fuss about it, and we hope that the jury makes the right call: Was it a mistake that any reasonable person could easily have made in the same circumstances? Was it a stupid mistake? Or was it just plain murder? The jury here seems to have thought it was a mistake they might have made themselves. I'm not certain that they were right about that, but I tend to lean in that direction.
You guys are loons, but it is still funny.
Caldera is the only Linux I have had crash on me.
EC
EverCode
This is likely the end of Caldera as a viable Linux vendor. The moment any company issues an IPO, they cease to be an economically signifigant business. The main impetus of their activity becomes financial activity - playing the stock market - and ceases to be competitively providing goods and services to the market. And the people who founded the company, with the original intent of earning profit by selling a quality Linux distribution, will no longer be the actual owners of the company. Their policy will now be determined by a corporate bureaucracy at the behest of stockholders, whose main purpose in investing is to gain a short term profit without regard for the actual business operations of the company. The stock market is anti-Capitalistic, anti-Individualistic, and detrimental to the economy. Caldera has, in issuing its IPO, handed the company over to the practical equivalent of Las Vegas gamblers.
Always liked this 'rags-to-riches' story:
A golf caddy asked a patron how he'd earned his fortune. The Billionaire replied, "Son, it was the depths of the depression in the 30's. I was down to my last nickle. One morning I bought an apple with that nickle and polished it all day. At the end of the day I sold it for 6 cents. The next day I did the same, an after a week could afford 2 apples. This went on for several months, at the end of which I'd earned a grand sum of $4.38. Then my wife's father died and left us 3 million dollars".
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
This isn't to say that it isn't of high quality, but simply that Caldera has been outmarketed and outpromoted by Red Hat.
I just don't see how Caldera can make a go of it unless they drop their witless marketing department and really start working on getting Caldera into more places that matter.
Caldera's only hope at avoiding complete irrelevancy is to bulk up with some quick cash and either start marketing their product for real, or make aquisitions that give it a reason to exist.
Can somebody explain to me why they start so low when they'll obviously be over 50$ the first day? It doesn't make sense.
Is Lineo included in this? If so, it might be a good investment.
I really don't know if any of the Linux companies are worth their massive stock valuations. Companies like amazon.com also aren't worth it, but have to potential to be. Linux however, probably doesn't have the potential to make anyone any money. How does a Linux company make money? By selling support, right? Yet, how many companies actually use the support from their OS provider? Most have support contracts for their hardware, but software issues are usually handled by internal IT staff. Companies like SUN and SGI can make money by giving their OS away because they have hardware to sell. Caldera on the other hand, only make money from the distro and from any support it sells. That means a company that previously bought 100 copies of NT from MS, can now just buy 1 copy of Linux from cheapbytes.com. Its not like they used MS support anyway, they just had their IT guy fix it. Thus the market for a corperate linux distro shrinks from everyone who uses the OS, to those who use the OS, but can't install it themselves and can't afford IT staff. Thats a very small piece of the market. Another way for the company to make money would be to write propriatory extensions for Linux. Caldera actually tried this before with Caldera Linux 1.3. Of course it failed. In the wide open world of Linux, proriatory Linux extensions won't fly. This can easily be seen in Redhat. You'd think that a company that entirely owns the corperate linux market would be making money? Redhat is losing something like $35 million a year. As for VA Linux, what the hell are they thinking? Why would I buy from some upstart Linux company when I can get systems from Dell, a proven, reliable company that actually has good service and support! Believe it or not, corperate types don't buy into the labor of love that is Linux. They are business, and they will do whatever makes sense, not what makes them feel good by helping out some upstart linux company.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The specific text from the filing is on page 69 and 70 of the document, on my printed copy it was pages 74 and 75 of 393...
They say half of the 10% Directed Share Program goes to company employees and insiders and the other half to the Linux community via a program at Wit Capital. Apart from needing to fund a $2,000 account at Wit Capital, there is no more information about the program. I have an email in to ask of this at Wit.
Anyone have more details?
Here goes:
Directed Share Program. At our request, the underwriters have reserved for sale, at the initial public offering price, up to ten percent of the shares of common stock offered in this offering under a directed share program. We currently expect that approximately half of these shares will be offered to directors, officers, employees, business associates, and related persons of Caldera Systems pursuant to a directed share program being administered by FleetBoston Robertson Stephens Inc., and that approximately half of these shares, pursuant to a directed share program being administered by Wit Capital Corporation, will be offered to open source software developers and other persons that we believe have contributed to the success of the open source software community and to the growth of Caldera Systems. We cannot assure you that any of the reserved shares will be so purchased. The number of shares of common stock available for sale to the general public in this offering will be reduced by the number of reserved shares sold. Any reserved shares not purchased will be offered to the general public on the same basis as the other shares offered in this offering.
Purchases of the reserved shares pursuant to the directed share program administered by Wit Capital are to be made through an account at Wit Capital in accordance with Wit Capital's procedures for opening an account and transacting in securities. In addition, Wit Capital is an underwriter of additional shares in the offering. A prospectus in electronic format is being made available on an Internet web site maintained by Wit Capital. In addition, all dealers purchasing common shares from Wit Capital in this offering have agreed to make a prospectus in electronic format available on a web site maintained by each of them. Other than the prospectus in electronic format, the information on the web site and any information contained on any other web site maintained by Wit Capital or any dealer purchasing common shares from it is not part of this prospectus or the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, has not been approved or endorsed by us or any underwriter in its capacity as underwriter and should not be relied on by prospective investors. The National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. approved the membership of Wit Capital on September 4, 1997. Since that time, Wit Capital has acted as a co-lead managing underwriter on one offering, a co-managing underwriter on 61 offerings and a dealer on 107 offerings.
That interpretation must be highly cultural. To me it looks more like a heart or the African continent ;)
Going on means going far, going far means returning. Tao te Ching
From london Financial Times Thursday Feb 24,article on Egg, a UK internet bank which is loosing money fast by enticing depositors with rates it cannot support (cant a city full of bond traders tell this is screwed?) says :
"In the short term no doubt, the Pru [Prudential, Egg's owners, a British insurer] will ensure Egg's stock flies. An engineered stock squeeze would certainly help, and predictably, Prudential is planning to list just 15 - 25% of the capital"
After the US saw its whole people belittled (and a world economy brought to its knees) by such machinations, simple manipulations such as those employed by Fisk were outlawed. Previous to Fisks demise, Vanderbuilt had been hailed as building a great empire upon such tricks. People will be in awe at such money - this is the nature of money. It has power over people who work for it. However it seems that we are no longer awake in vigilance against even the most puerile of deceptions.
http://search.ft.com/search/multi/globalarchive.js p?query=lex+Prudential&docId=00022400112 2&searchCat=1&offset=6&query=a href="http://search.ft.com/search/multi/globalarch
wow, dont let your digressions circumscribe you...
This Unix stuff is like, really neat n stuff!
I was working for an orginization that is largely a Novell shop that was looking to integrate Linux into the mix. Caldera and RedHat where both evaluted. Some interesting points came up:
- RedHat provided a convent way to choose the IPX frame type. Caldera OpenLinux defaulted to an incorrect IPX frame type and spit out a continual stream of errors to the console. The rc scripts had to be modified by hand to fix this.
- Integrating authenitication to NDS via the PAM module (take your pick: Netware, LDAP or RADIUS) was easiest with RedHat. The material was already available in a precompiled format for RedHat. Caldera OpenLinux didn't provide anything for authenticating to OpenLinux via Netware passwords. To make matters worse, the much smaller Caldera user base doesn't seem to provide much in the way of third party binaries which where compiled and tested specifically with OpenLinux libraries.
- Netware for Linux sucked in performance and has not been maintained. The NDS support in Caldera's Netware for Linux is badly out of date and tends to be the scape goat for DS related problems when calling Novell for support. Hence, Netware for Linux is best run in it's own independent and out-dated DS v6 tree. Also, once you remove the NDS advantage to Caldera Netware for Linux since it's NDS support sucks, it has not advantage in comparison to the MARS Netware emulator that ships with RedHat. MARS has both a performance and open-source advantages over the Caldera product.
- Novell's DDNS/DHCP product is administored via a Java application much the same as ConsoleOne. But the install program for the Java application is a Win32 application. Neither Novell or Caldera has made any effort to make such platform independant administration pieces easier to install on Linux. There is no advantage to Caldera over RedHat in attempting to get Novell Java applications running on Linux.
- The Linux 2.2 kernel already has NDS authenication support and Linux 2.4 continues to improve on this. The standard kernel support is available under open source and can continue to improve via peer review by the open source community. Caldera has kept even it's nkfs kernel module in secret for a long time causing customers to be locked into the specific kernel version that Caldera provides to take advantage of Caldera's Novell support. While Caldera has gotten around to releasing the nkfs kernel module source code, it remains so poorly documented that improving it would be more work the doing a complette rewrite.
There are also other issues not related to Novell that make OpenLinux a very poor choice:With all the advances the Linux community is making on their own, Caldera is loosing all compettive edge. One of the very few right moves done by Caldera Systems was declairing the Caldera would provide support for Netware for Linux running on RedHat. If they dropped OpenLinux and focused providing *REAL* support for product offering to be run on the commerically recognized distributions (RedHat, SuSE, TurboLinux, etc) then they might be worth re-investigating. As it stands right now, their ability to support OpenLinux is lacking and their ability to deal with other Linux offerings seem to be suffering along with it.
Now that many of the slashdot readers have experienced the magic of IPOs, I'm wondering what their experiences have been with trading companies?
Are the online trading companies worth it?
a budget increase for the police? are you slap fucking mad. I think it's a clear case of the blue suits needing to take less action and direct attention to the greater problem of fixing fundamental problems of society. Simplicity is genuis, throwing more money at problems won't help only create more. Haven't we had enough? Anton.