NEW YORK (CNM) -- NetSpud.com priced its initial public offering at $16 a share late Sunday. By the closing bell Monday, the stock had changed hands more than 40 million times and stood at $118, one of the biggest first-day gains of a year full of them.
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| NetSpud.com shares on Monday, their first day of trading |
The Mossbank, Oregon, company says it will deliver fresh potatoes to customers' doors within 48 hours, ordered through a Web site featuring an animated spud named "Tater Tim." It has not yet shipped a potato, and its prospectus warns that it "may never be profitable, and may never have potatoes."
"Investors are not buying potatoes, they are buying the future of potatoes," said chief executive Brent Kowalczyk, 26, who until last year managed a frozen-yogurt shop. Asked what the future of potatoes was, he said, "Online."
Analysts were divided. "Everybody eats potatoes, and everybody will soon be online," said one technology fund manager. A more skeptical analyst noted that the company's market value now exceeds that of the entire Idaho potato crop "and the state of Idaho, possibly."
The company's ticker symbol is SPUD. Its founders said they would celebrate with a dinner at a steakhouse, "with a baked potato, obviously, ordered the old-fashioned way."
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