Party like it's 1999? Internet firms.(PayPal's successful share offering shows that investors can now tell good dotcoms from bad)(Industry Overview)(Statistical Data Included)

Economist (US), The, February, 2002

A successful share offering by PayPal, an Internet firm, does not signal a new dotcom boom. But it does show that investors can now tell good dotcoms from bad

FOR a moment, it felt like the good old days of the new economy. When PayPal, an online payment start-up based in Silicon Valley, went public on February 15th, its shares surged by as much as 54%--even though the firm had lost $18.5m on sales of $40.4m in the quarter ending in December. PayPal had postponed its initial public offering (IPO) earlier this month after a company called CertCo filed a lawsuit accusing it of patent infringement. Surging share prices, non-existent profits and legal wrangles--it was as if the dotcom crash had never happened.

Yet anyone now hoping for a revival of the...

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