Part of the reason for the IPO flurry is the love affair Wall Street has been having with technology stocks this year. Investors in Netscape Communications, vendors of the fantastically popular Netscape WorldWideWeb browser ("fantastically popular" because the first release was available for free), have seen the stock price shoot literally through the roof, catapulting from $28 to $174. And in recent weeks, the buzz over the latest Disney movie, "Toy Story," helped make Pixar CEO Steve Jobs (former Apple and NeXT wunderkind) a billionaire thanks to an extremely well received IPO.
The fact of the matter is, the main point of an IPO is to make as much money as possible for a few company principals. Computer technology stocks have historically carried a cachet of glamour and rags-to-riches notoriety that makes them appealing to investors. This despite the inevitable stock drop that comes when reality sets in and Wall Street analysts point out, for instance, that Pixar doesn't even have a product yet.
As long as Wall Street continues to be enamored with cutting-edge technology, intelligent systems vendors will keep on filing IPOs. And why not? Verity, whose IPO was announced here two months ago (see ISR, October 1995), offered stock on its opening day at $12 per share; at this writing the stock is trading at $53.
The latest intelligent company to go public is Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products (Ieper, Belgium), a developer and licensor of advanced speech technologies, including automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech and digitized speech compression. L&H; plans to issue 3.575 million shares of common stock, with the offering price expected to be between $10.50 and $12.50 per share. Net proceeds will be used for repayment of various debts, the expansion of the company's headquarters and R&D; facility, and general corporate purposes, including strategic alliances and potential acquisitions. L&H; maintains a U.S. office in Woburn, Mass.
L&H; licenses its multilingual, multi-platform technologies to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), component manufacturers and software vendors for use in a broad range of applications in four principal markets: computers and multimedia, telecommunications, automotive electronics, and consumer electronics.
Following on the heels of L&H;'s announcement came the news that Neuromedical Systems Inc. (Suffern, N.Y.), a healthcare technology company, intends to offer 6 million shares of common stock, with a par value of $0.0001 per share. The company, which was founded in 1988, received a great deal of publicity earlier this year when it introduced its PAPNET Testing System, a neural network-based diagnostic screening application (see ISR, August 1995). PAPNET, the company's first product, enables laboratories to detect abnormal cells on cervical Papanicolaou ("Pap") smears which were not detected by standard manual microscopic inspection.
Just last month, PAPNET was approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Proceeds of the IPO will be used primarily to launch the marketing and sales of the PAPNET system in the U.S., as well as other general corporate purposes.
In the early days of this newsletter, back when it was known as AIWeek, we ran a regular feature called "AI Market Watch," which detailed the ups-and-downs of such public AI companies as Symbolics, Cognitive Systems and Scott Instruments. While the industry has changed a great deal since the 1980s, the so-called "AI Winter" has obviously warmed to a very pleasant summer day, at least on Wall Street. Let us know if you'd like to see the "Market Watch" return to these pages.
And from all of us here at ISR: Happy Holidays!
| EXPERT SYSTEMS | NEURAL NETWORKS |
|---|---|
| Concentra | Adaptive Solutions |
| ExperTelligence | Caere |
| Inference | Excalibur Technologies |
| IntelliCorp | HNC Software |
| Platinum Technology | Mitek Systems |
| Software Artistry | Nestor |
| Teknowledge | Neuromedical Systems |
| SPEECH RECOGNITION | VIRTUAL REALITY |
| InterVoice | Division |
| Lernout & Hauspie | Iwerks Entertainment |
| Kurzweil AI | SpaceTec IMC |
| Voice Control Systems | Superscape |
| Voice Powered Technology International | Virtuality |
| INTELLIGENT AGENTS | |
| General Magic | |
| Verity |