Investors Say "Nah" to Nanosys
INVESTORS LAST WEEK STUCK a pin in the nanotechnology stock bubble -- even before it had a chance to fully inflate.
In what was supposed to be a seminal event for the nascent nanotech sector, a development-stage Palo Alto, Calif., company called Nanosys had planned to go public last week in a deal co-managed by Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, CIBC World Markets and Needham & Co. Nanosys had planned to sell 6.25 million shares for $15 to $17 each. If the deal had gone through, the company would have had 21.9 million shares outstanding -- and a stock-market valuation of about $350 million, assuming the sale came at the middle of the range. For the several hundred private companies trying to create products with nanotechnology -- the manipulation of very small bits of matter, generally 100 nanometers or smaller -- a successful initial public offering would have opened the public market for a potentially world-changing new industry.
Alas, Nanosys pulled the IPO, citing adverse market conditions. No surprise there: Companies that pull their IPOs always cite adverse market conditions. Certainly, there's no more adverse condition for a pending initial offering than lack of investor interest in a company. To be fair, the general market conditions last week certainly seemed adverse, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipping below the 10,000 level Thursday and technology shares taking a header.
But the truth is that Nanosys' inability to sell stock to the public had less to do with market conditions than it did with the company's limited stage of development. As I noted in a previous review of the Nanosys IPO ("Sweating the Small Stuff," July 5), this was nothing more than a public venture-capital deal.
Other than some one-time payments under collaboration agreements with government and corporate partners, Nanosys has no revenue. In fact, it has no products, and doesn't expect to have any for several years. For some reason, the company's bankers apparently concluded that they could sell Nanosys like an early-stage biotech company, theorizing that the lack of fundamentals would be overcome by potentially revolutionary science. In essence, attempting to take Nanosys public in a still-embryonic state was a cynical bet that the buzz over nanotech was loud enough to lure in speculative-minded investors.
Certainly, Nanosys doesn't lack ambition. It plans to develop products for the energy, defense, electronics, life-science and information-technology sectors. It has impressive partners, including Intel, DuPont, and Matsushita, among others. It has strong venture investors, including ARCH Venture Partners, Polaris Venture Partners and Venrock Associates. It has an impressive group of scientific advisers, and a founder, Lawrence Bock, with a long history of taking biotech companies public. And, not least, it has more than 200 patents and patent applications, some developed in-house, others licensed from universities and other research centers.
But as Nanosys had to learn the hard way, you can't get very far generating losses and patents, but no revenue. What would you use as the valuation metric, a price-to-patents ratio? Buying Nanosys would have required a leap of faith that the company could someday profitably convert its intellectual property into products someone will want to buy. And it may very well do that. But there is no telling when -- or if -- that will happen. With the stock market in a skeptical mood, there was no way to close the deal.
Cry no tears for Nanosys, however. The company still has about $40 million in the bank, which will keep it going for a while -- it has only 43 employees -- and it would have little trouble raising additional cash from the venture-capital market. Indeed, Nanosys might actually be better served by waiting a year or two until it can show the financial markets a few dollars in product-related revenue.
The interesting question is what the failed offering might mean for the rest of the nanotechnology sector's ability to tap the capital markets in coming months and years. Nanotech watchers are split.
To some, the deal's demise simply reflects the fragile state of the public markets. "It's confirmation that we're in a bear market, and that the IPO window for early-stage companies is closing," says Charles Harris, CEO of Harris & Harris, a Nasdaq-listed venture-capital firm focused on nanotechnology investments. "In the short run, it will be difficult for other nanotech-enabled companies to go public. In the long run, nanotechnology-enabled companies will be like biotech companies: the IPO window will open and close in concert with the cycles of the overall capital markets. As time goes by, nanotech will inevitably and inexorably be a source of new company generation. But public investor enthusiasm will wax and wane."
Right now, sentiment is clearly on the wane. The Merrill Lynch Nanotechnology index, composed mostly of companies with nano-size market caps, has slumped 35% since its April 1 debut. Shares of Harris & Harris, which owns a 1.58% stake in Nanosys, as of midday Friday had swooned 1.93, or 19%, to 8.17. That stock, which trades under the symbol TINY, has lost about two-thirds of its value since peaking at close to 23 in early April. Harris notes that his firm has about $75 million in assets, more than $50 million of it in cash; despite the stock's swoon, it still carries a market cap nearly twice its net asset value.
The bottom line: It could be a while before another nanotechnology outfit tries to go public. Juan Sanchez, an analyst with Punk Ziegel, a New York investment firm, contends there's little chance of seeing any nanotech IPOs this year -- and certainly none as speculative as Nanosys. "Value is being created," he says. "The fundamentals are there. The industry is progressing. But the market isn't ready." When it comes to IPOs for companies without revenue or products, the market may never be ready.
BEA's Brain Drain
Another shoe has dropped at BEA Systems.
The maker of business software that integrates computer systems with the Internet had another defection. Chief Technology Officer Scott Dietzen, who announced his resignation last week, was the latest top executive to fly the coop. The San Jose company's chief architect, Adam Bosworth, resigned last month to join Google (Plugged In, July 26).
There were earlier rumblings from outside the company that Dietzen was on his way out, but BEA officials wouldn't confirm his imminent departure at the time of Bosworth's exit. Rick Jackson, a senior vice-president of product marketing, is also bolting BEA to join Borland Software. And a number of top software engineers are leaving BEA as well, causing something of a brain drain for the software firm. Its shares have swooned from their 52-week high of 15.50 in September to the 6.09 reached Friday.
In an attempt to put their best foot forward, BEA calls the rash of departures a natural result of a strategic reorganization that will de-emphasize new development of products in exchange for a sharper focus on selling and marketing the products already in place. Dietzen was known for his key role in leading WebLogic, which was the inventor of BEA's core application-server product gained through acquisition.
So -- the spin goes -- with less emphasis being placed on the geek camp within the company, there's less inspiration for guys like Dietzen and Bosworth, a former Microsoft developer, to hang around.
As part of the shuffle, insider Tom Ashburn has been promoted to executive vice-president to oversee all sales, service and marketing operations.
Ashburn will have his work cut out for him. BEA Chief Executive Alfred Chuang warned Wall Street last week that the company isn't expected to meet revenue forecasts for the quarter ended July 31. That was the bad news. The good news, says Smith Barney software analyst Tom Berquist, is that it could have been a lot worse.
"While the company did miss license revenue," he says, "they came in better than the nightmare scenarios that had been speculated on in the recent weeks after the big problems...for the broader enterprise group."
投资者对Nanosys说“不”
上周，投资者在纳米科技泡沫上戳了一个眼，虽然这个泡沫还没有得到充分的膨胀。
作为新兴的纳米科技行业一宗具有开创性意义的事件，加州一家尚处于发展初期的公司Nanosys本打算上周进行首次公开募股(IPO)，联合牵头行是美林(Merrill Lynch)、雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)、CIBC World Markets和Needham & Co.。Nanosys原计划出售625万股股票，每股指导价格为15美元至17美元。如果成功上市，这家公司的已发行股将为2,190万股，若以指导价格区间的中值计算，市值为3.50亿美元左右。对于目前数百家试图利用纳米技术开发产品的非上市公司来说，Nanosys如能成功上市，将为一个可能改变世界的新行业打开上市筹资之路。纳米技术是在极小极微的层面上对物质进行加工，通常是100纳米或更小的规格。
但Nanosys最终以市场行情不利为由，取消了IPO计划。毫不奇怪：取消IPO的公司总是说原因是市场行情不利。对于一家公司的IPO计划来说，最不利的市场行情莫过于投资者兴趣的缺乏。公平地说，上周的整体市场行情的确看来不佳，上周四道琼斯指数跌破了万点大关，科技类股领跌。
但事实是Nanosys无法将股票出售给公众，与股市行情的关系并不大，更多的是因为该公司仍处于有限的开发阶段。正如我在以前对Nanosys IPO的评价中所指出的那样，这基本上就是一次面向公众的风险资本融资。
除了与政府和公司合作伙伴之间合作协议下的一些一次性支付，Nanosys毫无收入来源。事实上，它也没有产品，预计几年内也不会有。由于某种原因，这家公司的投资银行显然得出结论，他们能像处理一家早期生物科技公司的IPO那样将Nanosys包装上市，理论上来说，可能具有革命性意义的科技将能弥补基本面因素缺乏的不利因素。本质上，试图将仍处于萌芽期的Nanosys进行上市是基于一种偏激的信念，即纳米技术的热谈足以吸引投机性的投资者。
当然，Nanosys并不缺乏雄心壮志。它计划为能源、国防、电子、生命科学以及信息技术行业开发产品。它拥有令人侧目的合作伙伴，包括英特尔(Intel)、杜邦(DuPont)、松下(Matsushita)等。它有资本雄厚的风险投资者，包括ARCH Venture Partners、Polaris Venture Partners和Venrock Associates。它的科学家顾问团给人留下深刻印象，创始人劳伦斯?博克(Lawrence Bock)在实现生物科技公司上市方面有多年的经验。而且，它还有200多项专利和专利申请，一些专利是自行开发的，一些则来自大学和其他研究机构的许可。
但你能拿什么作为估价准绳呢，股价与专利数之比？买入Nanosys必须要基于高度的信心，相信该公司有一天能将知识产权转化为有人愿意购买的产品。这一天或许能到来，但说不准什么时候到来，或者会不会到来。在股市持怀疑态度的情况下，这宗IPO无论如何是完不成了。
不过，不要为Nanosys哭泣。这家公司银行里仍有约4,000万美元的存款（这够它花上一阵的了），公司员工则只有区区43人，从风险资本市场获得更多现金应该不成问题。事实上，Nanosys等一两年有了产品相关收入后，再进行IPO或许更划算。
有意思的一个问题，是Nanosys的IPO失败会对其他纳米科技公司未来利用资本市场的能力产生什么影响？纳米科技行业的观察人士众说纷纭。
在一些人看来，IPO失败只是反映了股市本身的脆弱。“这证实我们正处于熊市中，面向早期阶段公司的IPO窗口正在关闭，”Harris & Harris (TINY)的首席执行长查尔斯?哈里斯(Charles Harris)表示。Harris & Harris是那斯达克上市的风险资本公司，重点投资纳米科技公司。“短期来说，其他纳米科技公司的上市将变得困难。长期来说，纳米科技公司将像生物科技公司一样：IPO窗口的打开和关闭将与整体资本市场的周期保持同步。随著时间推移，纳米科技将毫无疑问催生大量的新公司，但公众投资者的激情将消退。”
目前，信心显然正在减退。基本上由微型市值企业构成的美林纳米科技指数自4月1日推出以来跌幅已达到了35%。持有Nanosys 1.58%股份的Harris & Harris上周五午盘已下跌1.93美元，至8.17美元，跌幅19%，较4月初的近23美元高点已跌去了三分之二左右。哈里斯指出，目前公司约有7,500万美元的资产，包括5,000多万美元的现金；虽然股价下跌，目前的市值仍接近资产净值的2倍。
结论：一段时间以内可能不再会有纳米科技公司打算上市。纽约投资公司Punk Ziegel的分析师胡安?桑切斯(Juan Sanchez)认为，今年余下时间里纳米科技公司上市的可能性很小，像Nanosys这样投机性强的更是不可能。“价值正在创造，”他说，“基本面在那儿。行业在发展。但市场没有准备好。”对于没有收入或产品的公司进行IPO，市场可能根本就没有准备。
BEA系统的脑荒
BEA系统有限公司(BEA Systems Inc., BEAS)再起风波。
这家提供电脑系统与网络整合商业软件的公司又爆高层变节消息。上周宣布辞职的首席技术长斯考特?迪策恩(Scott Dietzen)是最近一位辞别这家公司的高层管理人士。上个月，这家圣荷塞公司的首席设计师亚当?博斯沃思(Adam Bosworth)宣布辞职，转而加入了Google。
早些时候，外界曾有传闻称，迪策恩打算离开BEA系统，但BEA系统的管理层在博斯沃思离职的情况下不愿证实迪策恩紧随其后离开了公司。此外，产品营销高级副总裁瑞克?杰克逊(Rick Jackson)也已弃BEA系统而去，投奔了Borland Software。众多软件工程师也纷纷辞别，导致这家软件公司出现了一定程度的脑荒。该股已较去年9月创下的52周高点15.50美元大幅下跌，周五报6.09美元。
BEA系统将一窝蜂的辞职解释为是公司战略重组的自然结果，重组后的公司将减少对产品新开发的强调，更突出现有产品的销售和营销。迪策恩是领导BEA系统应用伺服器软件业务WebLogic的关键人物。
因此，BEA系统的说法是，由于减弱了对公司内部研发业务的强调，迪策恩和前微软(Microsoft)开发人员博斯沃思等人留下来的意义不那么大了。
作为重组的一部分，内部人士汤姆?阿什波恩(Tom Ashburn)被提升为了执行副总裁，监管所有的销售、服务以及营销业务。
阿什波恩的任务可不轻松。BEA系统首席执行长庄思浩(Alfred Chuang)上周向华尔街发出警告，公司预计截至7月31日的季度将无法实现原先的收入预期。这是坏消息。而好消息在美邦(Smith Barney)软件分析师汤姆?布奎斯特(Tom Berquist)看来，是原来以为会比这更糟。
“虽然该公司新公布的许可收入预期低于上年同期水平，”布奎斯特说，“还是强于近周来无比糟糕的外界猜测。”
