Mandrake IPO Successful

Subscribers to Mandrake's weekly newsletter got the news earlier today that "MandrakeSoft is pleased to announce that the company is now listed on the Euronext Marché Libre. As a result of the successful Initial Public Offering, a total of 688.480 shares were sold at 6.2 Euros each. This results in an increase in capital of approximately 4.3 million Euros and represents 20.28% of the company's capital after issue." A good portion of the offering was completed in just the last half-day of availability, according to email received from Mandrake higher-ups, in part perhaps because of the confusion about who could participate in the offer, and how. There's also a story about the IPO at NewsForge, and a discussion at Mandrake's forum. If you're interested in picking up any stock in the company, there are some useful pointers (and more info) at their investor info page.

Comments

Reverse splits are commonplace in the new economy

[Carnage4Life]

A lot of technology companies try reverse stock splits to avoid being delisted from NASDAQ because their share price drops below a dollar for too long. A list of companies that have had reverse stock splits in recent memory,

1. Webvan: 25 to 1 reverse stock split.
   
   
2. Iomega: 5 to 1 reverse stock split.
   
   
3. 24/7 Media: 25 to 1 reverse stock split
   
   
4. Egghead.com: Between 5 and 10 to 1 reverse stock split
   
   
5. Quokka.com: 50 to 1 reverse stock split

There also a bunch more companies that decided not to go through the embarassment of a reverse split (especially since they rarely work) and just allowed themselves to be delisted without much of a fight. Considering that Caldera has been under a dollar for almost two weeks, who knows they may be next to face the delisting blues?

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Other Links

[phantumstranger]

First off, kudos Mandrake!!!

Here's a PDF describing the market.

Here is Mandrakes information page on the IPO.

Finally, this a price-per-share page.

Re:-1 Asshole

[isa-kuruption]

You're the kind of people that make the "attitude" of the Linux community. You are also the kind of person that makes me an advocate of Linux, but not a self-proclaimed "member of the Linux community."

The fact that the Linux community doesn't want to hear others' opinions is completely apparent. Maybe he didn't make the greatest support for his statements (I think many of us could make many more to back up what he stated), but he is heading in the right direction. Programmers need to live and raise families... something they can not do producing free software 24x7. They need income to survive and they won't get income by being open source developers.

The whole "bond" thing mentioned the other day on /. is a perfect example of how people are attempting to "live" from OpenSource software, but I have a strong feeling this won't fly too well since those who purchase such a bond won't be able to make any kind of profit on their money (and very few people are willing to give away free money, especially now that we're in a recession).

A lot of companies are doing the "service & support" thing like Mandrakesoft, but I honestly fee that the numerous newsgroups, IRC channels, and web pages can provide much better support for any Linux distro and/or opensourced project than any company can. By sheer numbers, we can see that Mandrakesoft (nor RedHat; nor Caldera) can hire 1 million people to do service & support while newsgroups and the such offer such a wide range of experience and aptitude.

As for survivability, Linux will survive, maybe more so for hobbyists and those who like the alternative. Linux won't be able to make money directly to those who build companies around it or Open Sourced software (well, maybe a few but I don't see a trend). The money will come into those individual programmers who spend their days working for an IT shop (or going to school) and their nights coding their window manager; using this project to get them experience which means better jobs. A person who developes open sourced software is looking at expanding his/her own horizons and by getting jobs for software companies that sell software, (s)he will be able to make the money (s)he needs to live, raise their family, and provide a better coder so future versions of windows DON'T SUCK.


I think you need to flash your brain's firmware.

Valuation of Linux distros?

[helsingin travolta]

C'mon, their valuation after this is something like 15 million USD. That is much for a company not selling anything but support contracts and GPL'ed cds. However, Caldera's valuation is 30 milj USD and Red Hat is ... 672 million! Ok, the Hat has other hassles going on but these little companies having just a distro as their core product... Hint: SELL, SELL, SELL!