VWMare Shares Soar on Day Two Following Big Bang IPO
From Staff Reports
Newly public software firm VMWare Inc. (NYSE: VMW) saw its shares climb another $6.71 each, or 13.16%, to close at $57.71 yesterday (Wednesday), the day after the company went public at $29 a share and soared 76% in its first day of trading. That made VMWare the best performing initial public offering, or IPO, of this year.
Prior to the VMWare offering, the top-performing U.S.-listed IPO was Fortress Investment Group LLC (NYSE: FIG), which climbed 67.6 % on its Feb.8 market debut.
A unit of data-storage giant EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), VMWare raised nearly $1 billion by selling 33 million shares at $29 each. VMWare specializes in a process known as "virtualization." It enables a single computer to function like multiple machines, which means companies can spend less on equipment and energy in their data centers. The rising demand for virtualization software is expected to generate more than $1 billion in sales for VMWare in just this year alone, but many industry analysts say that the greatest profit opportunities for this sector are still ahead.
