SiliconBeat

This morning, Reply.com of San Ramon announced it had filed its prospectus to go public. Just over the weekend, I wrote a column about how Silicon Valley would be better off with fewer IPOs.

This is just a hunch, but after reading through the filing, I can’t help but think the company is really angling for a sale, rather than an IPO. Time will tell, but this looks and feels like a company that needs an exit soon. And given the numbers and history, I’m betting they’re hoping to attract interested buyers. If they get all the way to the IPO, I’ll be a bit surprised.

Here’s why: Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most significant trends I’ve been watching over the past decade is the dramatic drop in public companies in Silicon Valley. Naturally, that number was artificially inflated during the dot-com bubble when it reached 417 in 2000. For our purposes, Silicon Valley includes San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and the southern half of Alameda County.

But the number of public companies has dropped for nine straight years now. Even when IPOs briefly reappeared in 2006 and 2007, they weren’t enough to overcome the net loss of public companies through acquisitions or bankruptcy.

In 2008, the number had fallen to 261. We just updated our records and the latest figure is 241.

That’s not just less than the dot-com era, that’s well below the 315 public companies the valley had in 1994 when the Mercury News started keeping track.

Here’s why I think this is a big deal.

Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you thinking the IPO market is going to come roaring back this year, think again.

I just saw the post from Techcrunch yesterday that Yelp was on the verge of taking a $50 million investment from Elevation Partners. This comes after the failed acquisition talks with Google. Here’s what’s interesting:

“The size of the round is in the $50 million range, but includes both a primary investment component as well as a secondary offering for long time employees. These deals are now being referred to as ‘DST deals,’ since DST first invested in Facebook in May 2009 at a $10 billion valuation and later funded employee buyouts at a $6.5 billion valuation. They did a similar deal with Zynga.”

In other words, part of the investment will allow long-time employees to cash out options. Same deal with Facebook and Zynga. But why? Read the rest of this entry »

This morning my inbox contained the latest report from Renaissance Capital. It has some hopeful news about IPOs, but not necessarily for Silicon Valley.

First, the good news: ”After an uptick in filing activity, there are 67 companies in the active IPO pipeline, up from 29 in March 2009.”

As far as Silicon Valley is concerned, that’s about as far as the good news goes. Now, here’s the bad news.

Read the rest of this entry »

Interest must be heavy in obtaining a piece of OpenTable’s impending initial public offering of stock scheduled for later this week, judging by an amendment the San Francisco-based developer of an electronic reservation booking system for restaurants filed today to its initial registration statement. The potential price range was bumped up nicely from the $12-$14 range the company announced last week to $16-$18.

That would boost the amount of many raised by the offering Read the rest of this entry »

Motorola, the troubled communications hardware maker that plans to split its operations into two different publicly held companies, named Qualcomm Chief Operating Officer Sanjay Jha (pictured) to be one of its co-chief executives. Jha will head up the company’s mobile devices division, once the producer of must-have cell phones that failed to keep pace.

Getting an executive to defect from a successful business like Qualcomm, a maker of wireless chips whose stock has risen by more than a third so far this year,to join Motorola, whose shares have dropped nearly 40 percent so far this year after losing 22 percent in 2007. Does not come cheap. Read the rest of this entry »