NetSuite Inc. (N) is expected to sell shares to the public Thursday in an inital public offering priced at $26 a share, twice the price anticipated in the company's earlier SEC filings. NetSuite's IPO was priced using a Dutch auction, and the company raised target range twice this week, indicating strong Wall Street interest in the stock. NetSuite first set the price range at $13 to $16, then raised it to between $16 and $19 on Tuesday, and to between $19 and $22 on Wednesday.
NetSuite is selling 6.2 million shares of common stock, which at the $26 IPO price would raise about $161.2 million. The San Mateo, Calif. company offers on-demand business managment software as a service (SaaS) applications, including ERP, CRM and accounting apps.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is the majority owner of NetSuite, has 5,300 customers and $67 million in 2006 revenues, but has a year-to-date loss of $20.6 million. The company's data center operations came under scrutiny earlier this year when NetSuite revealed in an SEC filing that it didn't have a backup data center, even though its primary data center is in an earthquake zone.
