3PAR Goes Public

In a long-anticipated IPO move, 3PAR began trading on the NYSE today under the symbol 'PAR.'

The eight-year-old company, which helped popularize the concept of thin provisioning, anticipates net proceeds of $95 million in an offer of 7.5 million shares at $14 per share. If all goes as planned, the IPO will come close to 3PAR's initial goal of raising $100 million, as stated in August 2007.

3PAR backed down from that $100 million figure earlier this month, but management apparently had confidence enough to go ahead and raise share pricing on the eve of the offer.

In early trading today, 3PAR shares were selling at $16.40.

At least one financial analyst thinks 3PAR's doing well, considering the recent activity among comparable startups: Compellent's October IPO was followed by volatile down-trending stock activity, and the long-awaited public debut of EqualLogic was thwarted by Dell's $1.4 billion bid for purchase early this month."I feel [3PAR] priced it fairly. Considering EqualLogic was just acquired by Dell, the three fastest growing storage companies in that arena are now spoken for," states Scott Sweet, senior managing partner of analyst firm IPOBoutique. "I also think that the opening on 3PAR was quite orderly and the deal was well placed. This was compared to the big gap up in Compellent -- only to see it come down significantly in the days following."

3PAR goes public during a time when other storage-related startups have had mixed results on Wall Street, evidenced in the sampling below:

3PAR will also face challenges, including competitor EqualLogic's acquisition by a deep-pocketed parent. So far, though, 3PAR has had consistent success that indicates it could meet any problems at least head on. Since March 2002, it claims to have shipped 400 systems to more than 200 end customers, including Dow Jones, MySpace, Priceline, and Verizon Business.

3PAR's IPO lead underwriters are Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse. They have a 30-day option to purchase up to 1.125 million shares at the IPO price less an underwriting discount. Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC acted as joint book-running managers with UBS Investment Bank acting as co-lead manager. Thomas Weisel Partners LLC and RBC Capital Markets acted as IPO co-managers.Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Byte and Switch's editors directly, send us a message.