A 2013 spinoff from Compuware starts public trading with Wall Street confidence, Matt Roush reports at WWJ.
Shares in Detroit’s newest tech stock soared Thursday, the first day of their trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.
Shares of Covisint Corp. jumped 30 percent to $13 a share after the company’s initial public offering of 6.4 million shares went on the market at Thursday’s open at $10 a share.
Covisint is a subsidiary of the Detroit software and IT services provider Compuware Corp. It provides secure business communication technology.
Six automakers started the Covisint tech firm in 2000.
The parent company is holding onto 82 percent of shares for now.
GM, Ford, Chrysler and three other automakers invested $500 million to start Covisint in 2000 as a provider of secure electronic data exchanges with suppliers. Compuware bought it in 2004 for $7 million, as local Forbes bureau chief Joann Muller recounts.
The company, independent since January, now has 560 employees and also provides online communication services for health care, oil and gas firms and the financial services industry.
It had $91 million in revenues last year and is growing at up to 25 percent annually, CEO and president David McGuffie tells Muller.
“Headlines said, ‘Covisint is dead,’ but they’ve come a long way,” said Compuware chief executive Robert Paul. . . .
If all goes as planned, Paul said Compuware will divest the remaining 80 percent of Covisint in the next six to 12 months.
(Deadline Detroit received startup support last year from Compuware Ventures, another division of Compuware Corporation.)
