The shares began trading last Thursday at $7 per share, down from the $9 to $11 price range set last month. The company offered 6.3 million shares at the lowered price, which netted RightNow approximately $44.1m, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Shares in the company were mostly flat on their first day of trading on Nasdaq, although they did jump as high as $7.52 following its debut. However, at the end of the day the shares closed back down at $7. On Friday, the shares fell 2.3% to $6.83 (as of 4pm GMT). The shares trade under the symbol RNOW.
The Bozeman, Montana-based company is a small player in the CRM field, although its financial track record was fairly impressive given the fact that it had experienced 25 consecutive quarters of sequential revenue growth since 1998.
In 2003, revenue increased 24.8% to $35.9m, although the net loss increased to $4.1m from $2.7m. By the first quarter of this year, it had broken into the black with net income of $80,000, up from a loss of $881,000 on revenue that increased 64.7% to $12.8m. For the six months ended June 30, 2004, it earned $714,000 on revenue of $27.6m compared to a loss of $1.7m on revenue of $16.1m for the corresponding period in 2003.
The company had originally sought to raise $54.4m from the initial public offering. Its discounted price shows the tricky state of the IPO market at the moment. Earlier in the week nanotechnology provider Nanosys Inc abandoned plans for a $100m IPO. The company blamed the volatility of public capital markets.
A queue of IT companies that have filed for an IPO are now considering whether to proceed with their offerings in the face of a lukewarm market reception. The one exception is Google Inc, which will proceed this week with an offer expected to raise more than $3bn.
