Extreme market conditions have forced Internet service provider UUNET Technologies Inc to withdraw its secondary public offering of new shares announced on February 7. UUNET’s share price has tumbled by more than a third since AT&T and MCI announced their own consumer-oriented Internet offerings. Other Internet-related stocks have also been hit hard. A UUNET spokesperson told Computergram that a depressed market had dragged its shares down from a high of $40.75 on February 7 to $24.50 yesterday, but that the market had failed to differentiate between companies which provide Internet services to the consumer, and companies like UUNET, which specialize in internet access for businesses. It says it still leads in that market; indeed AT&T rents its dial-up Internet business network lines from UUNET. The company said it does not compete with the consumer offerings of AT&T or MCI and believes it will not be affected significantly by those offerings. The company is still going ahead with plans to acquire extra fiber optic cable capacity to the tune of $150 million, the amount it was initially hoping to raise from the offering. UUNET filed to go public on May 25 last year.
