IPOs Likely to Get Off to Slow Start in ’01

Yet another withdrawn offering marked the dismal end of a year that started out with such promise for initial public offerings and the outlook for early 2001 is no better. No new public listings are scheduled for the first week of January, and the market is unlikely to recover any of its dynamism until February or later, analysts say--not until Nasdaq bottoms, the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates and the broader economic outlook improves. “Seasonally, it’s typical that January is a lackluster month for IPO issuance,” said Richard Peterson, of Thomson Financial Securities. “It’s probably to the advantage of the market because it has the opportunity to pause. But it is a double whammy because early in the year activities slow plus you have poor sentiment out there, so I think that will combine to slow things down near-term,” Peterson said. On Friday, online school Element K Corp. said it withdrew plans for an IPO because of unfavorable market conditions. Later in January, a handful of companies are expected to go to market, including biotech firm Ribapharm and Kabira Technologies, a maker of software that connects telecommunication networks, traditional networks and the Internet.