Shares of software maker VMware soared 79 per cent in the software maker's trading debut yesterday in what has become the top performing initial public offering in the US this year.
The group's products improve the efficiency of computers by enabling multiple environments to be run on a single machine
The share price was set at $29 (€21.37) a share on Monday evening but in early trading yesterday the stock was quoted at $52 on the New York stock exchange.
The successful IPO has raised nearly $11 billion for its parent, EMC, the data storage equipment maker which in January 2004 acquired VMware for $625 million in an effort to diversify beyond hardware.
EMC established a presence in Ireland in 1988 with its first manufacturing facility outside of the US in Ovens, Co Cork, and it now employs over 1,500 people in Ireland.
In February, VMware in its own right announced plans to create 350 technical support and back-office jobs in Cork.
The success of its floatation places VMware, which until now has been relatively unknown outside technology circles, among the world's largest publicly-held software makers.
Enthusiasm for the offering has been high, analysts say, because it is the market leader in one of the fastest-growing segments of the computer industry.
A month ago the company forecast that its shares would sell for between $23 and $25. Last week, while VMware executives were out on the road explaining the virtualisation technology that lies at the heart of all its products, the company raised its estimate for the IPO to between $27 and $29 a share.
Unlike recent hot technology IPOs such as that of Google, whose products are used by millions of consumers on a daily basis, virtualisation is a relatively arcane subject.
For the past several quarters VMware's sales have doubled from the year-earlier periods as its software has become more widely adopted in corporate data centres, boosting the company's annual revenue to about $1 billion.
