By Rick Aristotle Munarriz
February 12, 2010 |
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Disney Buys Marvel! David Gardner called it. He’s up 1,334%! See what David’s recommending that you buy NEXT.
Why did QuinStreet (Nasdaq: ) cross the IPO road? To get pummeled on the other side.
You can't get any more nondescript than the online direct marketer's Wall Street debut yesterday. The shares were priced at $15, opened at $15, and closed at $15.
Sure, QuinStreet may have traded as high as $15.55 yesterday morning, but that's a far cry from the gilded days when a fast-growing dot-com would be off to the races. Given the market's bearish bent today, QuinStreet is also officially a busted IPO, after trading as low as $14.30 this morning.
QuinStreet wanted to sell 10 million shares at $17 to $19 apiece, but had to shave its price down to $15 to find enough IPO buyers.
That's just not right. QuinStreet may not be a household name, but the company is backed by pedigreed investment banker Frank Quattrone. It's also growing nicely, having cranked out several profitable years in a row.
Revenue through the first six months of fiscal 2010 rose 27%, with earnings climbing twice as fast. Even in fiscal 2008, when earnings growth took a breather, QuinStreet still managed to grow its top line 15% during a very challenging year for the advertising industry.
You probably don't know QuinStreet, because most of its work is done behind the scenes. It specializes in vertical marketing, giving sponsors an advertising platform to reach Internet users in targeted age, income, or life event brackets. Clients appreciate this sort of deep dive.
QuinStreet isn't small by dot-com standards. It rang up of $17.2 million on $260.5 million in revenue last year. Unfortunately, it just happened to have lousy timing for its debutante dance.... |