NYT: Two Technology Offerings Find Favor on Wall Street

By Claire Cain Miller

SAN FRANCISCO — The dry spell in initial public offerings for venture-backed technology companies may be over. This week, two of those companies went public: OpenTable, the online restaurant reservation service, and SolarWinds, which makes network management software.

Investors gave both of them warm receptions. Shares of OpenTable, which began trading Thursday on Nasdaq, were originally priced at $20 and jumped 60 percent to close at $31.89. Shares of SolarWinds, which began trading Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange, closed Thursday at $13.79, 10 percent above their offering price of $12.50.

The offerings could unclog the “moldy I.P.O. pipeline,” where some companies have been languishing for more than a year, said Scott Sweet, senior managing partner at I.P.O. Boutique, a research and advisory firm. (more)