Finance History|Nasdaq MarketSite — Eighteen Dollars That Closed at Twenty-Two Twenty-Five

People treat Cisco as a San Jose networking house that always printed CSCO on a mature book.

The 1990 issuer was a six-year-old router maker that Sequoia Capital had recapitalized in 1987.

On 16 February 1990 the company offered 2.8 million shares at 18 dollars each.

The stock finished that session at 22.25 dollars, with 3.3 million shares traded.

Lead underwriters were Morgan Stanley and Smith Barney, Harris Upham.

Forbes later recorded a 24 percent first-day gain from the 18-dollar offer.

Sales had risen from 1.5 million dollars in 1987 to 28 million dollars in 1989.

The mechanism is a product customers already needed. The routers had orders; the public book priced that backlog.

Nasdaq MarketSite at 4 Times Square opened in 2000, ten years after this print. The pin is that public facade, the later face of the electronic market that took the 1990 order. Interior studios are not a visitor floor.

Photo: Luca Marfe, June 2015, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Nasdaq MarketSite.