Concur Floats Bouyant IPO

<B> Concur Floats Bouyant IPO</B>

By Mary Ann McNulty

<i>Redmond, Wash.</i> - Concur Technologies Inc. raised more than $40 million in its initial public offering in late December--and, in the rising winds over Wall Street last week, by press time its stock had soared to three times its expected opening price.

The market reception to this developer of expense reporting and procurement software is being closely watched by other travel technology firms that likewise intend to go public. Competing expense vendor Captura and booking firm Xtra On-line have previously expressed plans to sell stock. Underwriters for the Concur offering, led by BancBoston Robertson Stephens Inc., contended they had expected prices to rise dramatically, as the company's "Internet-related" focus is being well received in a bull market for technology offerings.

Concur, formerly Portable Software, offered 3.1 million shares of common stock at $12.50 a share, higher than the original expected range of $9.50 to $11.50. The stock actually opened at $14 a share, with more than 10 times the number of people who purchased stock expressing interest in it, according to Steve Singh, the company's president and CEO. In early trading on the Nasdaq on Dec. 16, the price soared more than 36 percent, to $17.

Existing stockholders sold 200,000 shares of their stock, with the remaining 2.9 million shares sold by Concur. A total of 3.565 million shares were sold, raising $44.562 million, said a spokesman for underwriter Hambrecht & Quist LLC, San Francisco, due to over-allotments.

Concur intends to use its almost $40 million in net proceeds for working capital, including increased sales and marketing and research and development, as well as professional services expenses, according to its prospectus.

Concur initially filed its intent to hit Wall Street in late August, just as Wall Street's interest in initial public offerings began to wane. Although conditions deterred a number of companies, including Amadeus, from proceeding with planned IPOs last year, Concur opted to begin trading.

As part of its year-long preparation for going public, Concur secured minority investments from American Express and a venture capital firm, RRE Investors LLC, headed by former Amex CEO James Robinson. For their $5 million investments and options to purchase more stock, both companies were extended board seats. Ed Gilligan, president of American Express Corporate Services, and Robinson now have joined the Concur board.

Since its inception in 1993, Concur has lost more than $27 million, with most of that coming from venture capitalists through the sale of preferred stock and long-term debt.

In early December, Concur also announced the general availability of its latest version of XMS, which includes an audit administrator, a Web-based tool to create and maintain rules to enforce corporate travel policies. More importantly for American Express card and online booking product users, the version includes features designed to more tightly integrate the expense software with those products.

"The XMS Audit Administrator function will eliminate the process of an employee in accounting manually querying expense reports that don't meet the necessary criteria. As a result, expense reports that pass all of the audit rules don't have to be touched by the accounting department," said Jeff Atchison, manager of accounts payable for XMS customer Nine West. "By automating this tedious process, we're saving employee time and company money."

For Amex customers, the XMS/AX version offers an end-to-end travel management solution that integrates booking, expense reporting and management reporting. The companies have integrated the products to allow XMS to take credit card feeds from Amex, thus moving charged data into an expense report, reducing data input for the traveler.

Also included in the new version is the integration of Cognos' PowerPlay for the Web, a tool that allows corporate managers to drill down into expense data to determine expense patterns, trends and relationships via a browser.