Telecom gear maker Calix goes public at top of range

Petaluma, California-based Calix, maker of broadband hardware and software unknowingly used by many rural customers in America, completed an initial public offering today for which shares were priced at $13.00. Reuters reports that the price was at the top of the company’s expected range.
The company’s name is pronounced with a short a. It’s New York Stock Exchange symbol is CALX.
In today’s offering, Calix sold 6.3 million shares, raising an estimated $82.3 million.
VentureBeat covered the company’s $100 million funding round last August. As Dean Takahashi wrote at the time, Calix offers a unified access service, meaning it ties together various communications services with broadband Internet service. It specializes in helping phone companies convert their phone networks from the phone system to the Internet, from narrowband to broadband, and from copper wires to fiber optic cable.
Calix already provides about 40 percent of the broadband service to rural service providers in the U.S. The company was founded in 1999. Competitors include Alcatel-Lucent, Adtran, and Huawei. In North America, Calix focuses on providing broadband equipment to smaller service providers. About 70 percent of the top 50 U.S. communications providers rely on Calix equipment.
Companies: Calix