DETROIT – Covisint Corp. began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Thursday, opening at $12.77 a share, before closing at $12.31 ? the first initial public offering of a Detroit tech company since Syntel went public in 1997.
The former Compuware Corp. subsidiary?s stock put up for sale represented 17.6 percent of the issued shares. Compuware will retain the rest but sell them over the next few quarters to boost cash flow.
The underwriters, New York City-based Credit Suisse Securities and Portland, Ore.-based Pacific Crest Securities, have a 30-day option to purchase up to 960,000 more shares. It was the first IPO of a Detroit area tech company since Syntel Inc. went public in 1997.
Covisint, which provides cloud-based data-sharing services, primarily for the auto and health care industries, generated revenue of $94 million for the 12 months that ended June 30.
Covisint was founded by Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler, struggled to generate revenue and was sold to Compuware in 2004.
“This is an exciting day for all of our employees. We’ve all got our screens on waiting for the stock to start trading,” said David McGuffie, Covisint’s president and CEO, said shortly before trading began.
