Palm Raises $313 Million, Bolsters War Chest

Palm on Wednesday said it raised $313 million from its public offering of 20 million shares. Palm shares showed strong demand by pricing at $16.25 a share.

Last week, Palm said it would float more shares to bolster its cash position. When Palm delivered its first quarter results shares bounced around in the $14 to $15 range. All things considered, Palm’s pricing (statement) was about as good as it gets.

Palm added that underwriters—Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and RBC Capital—have a 30-day option to buy 3 million additional shares. If that option is exercised Palm may get a few more dollars out of the deal.

Many companies—banks, airlines and a bevy of others—have used the recent stock market run-up to float more shares and bolster their balance sheets.

Palm said it will use the proceeds for working capital and general corporate purposes. As of Aug. 31, Palm had $212 million in cash and short-term investments. The additional $313 million will come in handy as Palm aims to roll out more WebOS devices.

Comments

[Yagottabe K...:]

Elsewhere a poster commented that Palm should stop trying to sell phones and just sell stock in their company.

Lol!

Sep 23 10:07 AM

[Aryamehr:]

Day in and Day out, Palm continues to make you iPhone fanatics into fools. Why don't you just go and use the Pre and get a feel for what it can do before you continue making fools out of yourselves, especially those of you that Shorted the stock. The WebOS is probably the best Smartphone platform to come to market, regardless of how much Spin the iPhone fans wish to promulgate. An apropos cliche to most of you burned Shorts would be "oh what a tangled web we weave when we first practice to deceive." This is not to say the Pre is a perfect phone but it unequivocally emulates the iPhone and in some cases it is much better. When my iPhone's battery loses its juice I can do nothing but untie the phone from myself to charge it, however all I need to do with the Pre is change my battery. When my touch screen on the iPhone gets jammed in the process of what I might be doing, I have to close the application and reboot my phone, whereas on the Pre I move to the qwerty keyboard in such a situation. On the iPhone I can only do one thing at a time while on my Pre I can open up numerous applications simultaneously while I am talking. At night I can take picture using my flash on the Pre, but on the iPhone I don't have a flash, hence my pictures are not worth keeping. Yes, the iPhone has 70,000 applications, mind you produced by third party developers, not Apple, however the iPhone has been around for over 30 months whereas the Pre has been around for just over 3 months. Most of those applications on the iPhone will soon be available on the Pre and most Android based phones. So touting the iPhones App. Store won't carry much weight for much longer. My point is be careful with your 'irrational exuberance' over the iPhone and remember what happened to those of us that lost all logic during the .com and real estate boom. Last but not least, the Pre costs only $69/month at Sprint for all your wireless usage, while the iPhone costs $150/month at ATT.

Sep 23 11:32 AM

[Aryamehr:]

Oh, another point of contention is iTunes, well I am sorry to say again that Amazon provides everything on iTunes plus more.

Sep 23 11:45 AM

[Tom B:]

Hard to imagine anyone stupid enough to expect this Lazarus to rise from the grave.

Sep 24 08:50 AM

[Ricard:]

I own an iPhone. This being my first and only Apple product, I can thus say that I am not a fanatic.

What I will say is that the iPhone has been such a slam-dunk in blowing away my expectations that I feel no need to look around for a competitive product.

Much of this is because of the proprietary Apps Store, one which all news I've read says that all other products fall far short, including the Pre.

What this points to IMHO is that Apple's branding has exceeded iconic, a fact that I'm sure any rational viewer of this company will immediately agree with. Palm, on the other hand, is a has-been. The Palm Pilot, its ubiquitous product, was hot 10 years ago. Now, hobbled by its own inability to execute over time, it attempts to challenge Apple and RIMM out of all companies to assert its domain. It will fail and fail miserably, if history is any guide.


On Sep 23 11:32 AM Aryamehr wrote:

> Day in and Day out, Palm continues to make you iPhone fanatics into
> fools. Why don't you just go and use the Pre and get a feel for what
> it can do before you continue making fools out of yourselves, especially
> those of you that Shorted the stock. The WebOS is probably the best
> Smartphone platform to come to market, regardless of how much Spin
> the iPhone fans wish to promulgate. An apropos cliche to most of
> you burned Shorts would be "oh what a tangled web we weave when we
> first practice to deceive." This is not to say the Pre is a perfect
> phone but it unequivocally emulates the iPhone and in some cases
> it is much better. When my iPhone's battery loses its juice I can
> do nothing but untie the phone from myself to charge it, however
> all I need to do with the Pre is change my battery. When my touch
> screen on the iPhone gets jammed in the process of what I might be
> doing, I have to close the application and reboot my phone, whereas
> on the Pre I move to the qwerty keyboard in such a situation. On
> the iPhone I can only do one thing at a time while on my Pre I can
> open up numerous applications simultaneously while I am talking.
> At night I can take picture using my flash on the Pre, but on the
> iPhone I don't have a flash, hence my pictures are not worth keeping.
> Yes, the iPhone has 70,000 applications, mind you produced by third
> party developers, not Apple, however the iPhone has been around for
> over 30 months whereas the Pre has been around for just over 3 months.
> Most of those applications on the iPhone will soon be available on
> the Pre and most Android based phones. So touting the iPhones App.
> Store won't carry much weight for much longer. My point is be careful
> with your 'irrational exuberance' over the iPhone and remember what
> happened to those of us that lost all logic during the .com and real
> estate boom. Last but not least, the Pre costs only $69/month at
> Sprint for all your wireless usage, while the iPhone costs $150/month
> at ATT.

Sep 24 11:52 PM

[Ricard:]

Totally false. My iPhone package costs me less than $80 a month. I've yet to pay for a single app on the app store, meaning I've yet to spend anything more than this round number.

Why don't YOU just go and use the [iPhone] and get a feel for what it can do before you continue making a fool out of yourself?


On Sep 23 11:32 AM Aryamehr wrote:

> Day in and Day out, Palm continues to make you iPhone fanatics into
> fools. Why don't you just go and use the Pre and get a feel for what
> it can do before you continue making fools out of yourselves, especially
> those of you that Shorted the stock.

> Last but not least, the Pre costs only $69/month at
> Sprint for all your wireless usage, while the iPhone costs $150/month
> at ATT.

Sep 24 11:56 PM

[Ricard:]

BTW, I am short AAPL and PALM.

Sep 24 11:57 PM