Lucent Technologies Inc, the Murray Hill, New Jersey telecommunications equipment and technology arm of AT&T Corp, got its initial public offering of 112m shares away at $27 a share last week, up from the initial target range of $22 to $25 a share, making Lucent $3.025 billion in the biggest ever US flotation. Volume was more than 24m shares within the first 15 minutes of the counter opening for trade. Lucent is expected to spend some of the cash on acquisitions to fill out its product line: the names that were mentioned to Reuter included StrataCom Inc, Newbridge Networks Corp and Novell Inc, with Cascade Communications Corp also getting a vote.
Shares in Lycos Inc, Marlborough, Massachusetts Web Spider specialist, opened at $29.25 when trading started, a $13.25 premium on the initial public offer price, before fading to close at $21.94 on the first day – still a 37% premium on the issue price, and putting a valuation on the company of $300m.
NEW ANALYSIS IBM FOCUS
