Finance History|Nasdaq MarketSite — Twenty-Three Dollars for Sixteen Channels of Glass

People treat Ciena as a Hanover optical house that always printed CIEN on a mature book.

The 1997 issuer was a Savage, Maryland, startup selling dense wavelength-division multiplexers.

Ciena's April 1997 Form 10-Q recorded that the company completed its initial public offering of 5,750,000 shares, inclusive of 750,000 overallotment shares, at 23 dollars a share on 7 February 1997.

Net proceeds were about 121.8 million dollars in 1997 currency, plus 0.6 million dollars from warrant exercises.

The New York Times recorded that the stock opened at 23 dollars and closed at 37 dollars that first session, for a market capitalization of 3.44 billion dollars in 1997 currency.

The same article gave fiscal 1996 results of 14.7 million dollars earned on 54.8 million dollars of revenue, and said the company then had three customers.

The Washington Post later put the February raise at 115 million dollars at the 23-dollar offer, the figure before the overallotment counted in the 10-Q.

The mechanism is a still-narrow customer book priced as public fiber capacity. Sixteen wavelengths on one strand were the product.

Nasdaq MarketSite at 4 Times Square opened in 2000, three years after this print. The pin is that public facade, the later face of the electronic market that took the 1997 order. Interior studios are not a visitor floor.

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