Major Caldera shareholders may sell
Published: 24 Jul 2001 11:47 BST
Two major investors in Caldera International, which sells the Linux and Unix operating systems, will be able to sell previously restricted stock, the company said in a regulatory filing on Monday.
As a result of a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Tarantella will be able to sell 16 million Caldera shares through a dealer or broker, while MTI Technology will be able to sell 5.3 million shares. Tarentella got its shares through the sale of its Unix software to Caldera, while MTI was an early investor.
"What this will allow is for them in an orderly way to sell their shares if they want and when they want in the future," Caldera chief financial officer Bob Bench said in an interview. "That way we can work with them in placing those shares with institutions that like our space now...as we and each of those two large shareholders would like to work those shares on the market."
When the Utah-based company raised $70 million in its March 2000 initial public offering, a few months after rival Red Hat went public, Linux still was on the list of hot technology opportunities. Not long after, though, Linux started to lose its lustre, investors' scepticism was out in force and Linux companies were in survival mode.
It's not clear how much money the Caldera investors will get for their stock. Lineo, LynuxWorks, Linuxcare and Turbolinux all withdrew from IPO plans in recent months, citing a weak market, though French Linux company MandrakeSoft is braving the stock offering waters with an effort to sell about $3.7m worth.
Caldera laid off 32 of its employees in April. With the Unix software acquisition, the company now has 619 employees, the company said in the filing.
In its first quarter with the Unix and Linux software products, Caldera hopes to garner $18m to $20m, Bench said. Overall, though, the company expects an operating loss of about $15m to $16m.
One issue the company faces is encouraging customers of its OpenServer product, which the company is no longer developing, to migrate to OpenUnix or OpenLinux products. To encourage this transition and to make the two other products work more similarly, the company will release programming tools in the autumn, Bench said.
"As the two products are integrated, we have two or three fairly major products...that will be released this fall. We believe that solution set will give us a tremendous bridge for our current customer base to move forward on the new platforms," Bench said.
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