RedEnvelope Files IPO

(Catalog Age) Gifts cataloger RedEnvelope is going public. The San Francisco-based company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering of as much as $41 million in common stock.

In its preliminary prospectus RedEnvelope did not specify how many shares it plans to offer or estimate a price for the proposed offering. The company did say it would be registered on the Nasdaq exchange with the symbol REDE. W.R. Hambrecht & Co. will underwrite the initial offering.

Ken Packer, managing partner of Waukee, IA-based Financial Advisory Partners, believes that Red Envelope’s IPO is well timed. "There’s been a dearth of IPOs in the past three years," he said, adding that investors may be enticed by the recovering Dow and Nasdaq along with RedEnvelope's solid Web presence.

For the year ended March 30, RedEnvelope had sales of $70.1 million, up 26% from $55.8 million the previous year. What’s more, the company pared its net loss 45%, to $7.7 million from $14.1 million for fiscal 2001.