page_title: Caldera International
section_title: Investments and IPO
hierarchical_section_title: Caldera International / Caldera Systems / Investments and IPO
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior of the offices of Caldera Systems, Inc. in Orem, Utah, as seen in January 2001.
context_page_description: Caldera International, earlier Caldera Systems, was an American software company that existed from 1998 to 2002 and developed and sold Linux- and Unix-based operating system products.
  Caldera Systems was created in August 1998 as a spinoff of Caldera, Inc., with Ransom Love as its CEO. It focused on selling Caldera OpenLinux, a high-end Linux distribution aimed at business customers that included features it developed, such as an easy-to-use, graphical installer and graphical and web-based system administration tools, as well as features from bundled proprietary software. Caldera Systems was also active in the Java language and software platform on Linux community.
  In March 2000, Caldera Systems staged a successful IPO of its stock, although the stock price did not reach the stratospheric heights of its chief competitor Red Hat and some other companies during the "Linux mania" of 1999.
  In August 2000, Caldera Systems announced the purchase of Unix technology and services from the Santa Cruz Operation. The much larger, merged company changed its name to Caldera International when the deal closed in May 2001.
context_section_description: Caldera Systems had not been profitable; for the company's 1998 fiscal year, ending on October 31, it had a loss of $7.9 million on revenue of $1.05 million, and for its 1999 fiscal year, it had a loss of $9.3 million on revenue of $3.05 million.
  However, the industry saw promise in Linux as a solution for businesses, and in the latter half of 1999 a "Linux hysteria" had erupted in the stock market, with first Red Hat in August 1999 and then Cobalt Networks and VA Linux in November and December 1999 having experienced huge jumps in value during their first day each of trading.
  On January 10, 2000, three things happened, all of which were coincidental.  
  A settlement to the Caldera v. Microsoft suit over DR-DOS was announced, with Microsoft paying former parent company Caldera, Inc. an amount estimated at $275 million (which turned out to be $280 million).
  Caldera Systems received a $30 million private equity investment from a group of companies that included Sun Microsystems, Novell, Citrix, Santa Cruz Operation, Chicago Venture Partners, and Egan-Managed Capital, with the goal to "fund operations and accelerate the growth and acceptance of Linux."  Also, Caldera Systems announced that it would be filing to have an initial public offering.  Ransom Love said that the Microsoft settlement would not benefit Caldera Systems other than that Caldera, Inc. would relinquish the name "Caldera", which would address existing industry confusion between the two.  Reports at the time also indicated that the settlement would not directly benefit Caldera Systems, but that Caldera Systems could get an intangible benefit from a name association with a company that had bested an industry giant.  Love also said that the timing between the funding round, work for which had begun six months earlier, and the IPO announcement was "unfortunate, and completely coincidental".
  Caldera Systems reincorporated in Delaware on March 6, 2000.
  By this point it was well positioned in some respects, such as having a strong relationship with Sun and receiving good product reviews within the industry.  But it suffered from a lack of public awareness; as IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky said, "They have a wonderful demo, and the product looks very good. But if you asked people on the street about Caldera they would probably think you are talking about a volcano in Hawaii."
  The company then staged an IPO of its common stock, with the symbol CALD.  On the first day of trading, March 21, 2000, Caldera Systems' shares doubled in value, going from an initial price of $14 to close at $29 7/16, with heavy trading been seen and an intra-day high of $33.
  The IPO raised $70 million for the company and gave it a market capitalization of $1.1 billion.
  While the launch was successful on its own terms, analysts saw signs that the Linux mania was finally cooling, abetted by Red Hat and VA Linux having seen their values steadily decrease since their spectacular starts.  So, while some observers viewed the IPO as a success, others viewed it as a disappointment.  Red Hat continued to dominate in North America, with an over 50 percent share of the Linux market.
caption: Workplaces and offices within the Caldera Systems headquarters
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "200", "Image YResolution": "200", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2019:11:08 20:36:55", "Image ExifOffset": "172", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "310", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3222", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1166", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "784"}