Raleigh-based Total Sports "has abandoned its plan" for
an IPO, according to Christina Dyrness of the Raleigh NEWS &
OBSERVER, who reports that the company will now look to
"raise private financing from a wide range of sources,
something that wouldn't have been possible as long" as an
IPO was on file with the SEC. In a letter yesterday to the
SEC, Total Sports Founder & CEO Frank Daniels cited "the
reductions in the stock prices of comparable public
companies over the past few months." Dyrness notes that
Total Sports lost $20.9M in '99, but the company "hopes to
be profitable by next year but needs to raise cash until it
is self-sustaining." Earlier this month, Total Sports "laid
off about" 20% of its employees and President George
Schlukbier resigned. Daniels, on Total Sports' "strategy
reassessment": "It's the same thing every content company is
going to experience going forward." Total Sports board
member Bill Neal, on the company's decision not to go
public: "Any time any [IPO] registration is pulled, people
look for terminal cancer, and this is not the case. It's a
prudent reaction to a normal business cycle." Neal added
that going public "when the market is punishing the stocks"
of sports content companies like SportsLine.com and Quokka
Sports wouldn't be "a sane thing to do" (Raleigh NEWS &
OBSERVER, 5/16). Total Sports filed for an IPO with the SEC
in November '99 to raise $57.5M (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 5/16).
