Shares of MiningCo.com, an Internet directory that uses humans to find search results, more than doubled on their market debut on Wednesday, proving the market likes Net business models.
The stock priced at US$25 a share, opened at $52, and quickly hit $62.25.
"They're an attractive company because traffic is very high, and they do offer a neat way to search the Web instead of using the traditional search engine," said Ken Fleming, analyst at Renaissance Capital's IPO Fund.
The offering of 3 million shares raised $75 million for MiningCo (MINE), which is based in New York City.
MiningCo offers "guidesites" -- Web sites created by human searchers who are experts in specific topics like retirement planning, the Clinton administration, or Star Wars trivia. The guidesites offer 400,000 links to other sites.
Designers of the Web pages get a percentage of the company's advertising revenues and stock options.
MiningCo.com said Comcast Interactive Investments will buy $2.5 million of common stock at a price per share of $23.25 after the offering.
Fleming said the Comcast investment helped hype the stock.
"Comcast just bought MediaOne, which makes them a bigger player" in the bandwidth game, he said. "Miningco could be their start page."
MiningCo had a loss of $15.6 million last year, on revenue of $3.7 million last year. The site had 4.6 million unique users in January.
The company's accumulated deficit as of 31 December 1998 was $26.7 million, and it expects to continue to lose money for the foreseeable future, according to its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Competition comes from the likes of GeoCities and theglobe.com.
