Every day, Benzinga looks back on a remarkable market-related moment that occurred on this date.
What happened? On March 30, 1999, Priceline.com completed its initial public offering.
Where the Market Was: The Dow ended the day at 9,913.26. The S&P 500 ended at 1,300.75 points.
What else happened in the world? In 1999, Jack Kervorkian was convicted of second-degree murder for assisted suicide of Thomas Youk. Thirteen people were killed in a shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado. The average cost of a new home was $131,750.
Priceline’s Debut: Priceline went public at $16 a share on March 30, 1999. Just a month later, the stock closed at $162.37, an incredible 914 percent gain in one month.
Unfortunately, like so many other Dot Com darlings, Priceline’s meteoric rise was short-lived. The stock collapsed during the bubble burst, eventually losing 99 percent of its peak market capitalization of $23 billion by the end of 2000, to a low of $6.37 per share. Priceline made its first profit in 2001 and in 2010 became the largest online hotel reservation service in the world.
See also: How to invest in upcoming IPOs
After a name change in 2017 to Booking Holdings Inc BKNG, the stock now trades at $2,372 per share and has a market cap of $97 billion.
This post This day in market history: the Priceline IPO
was original published at “https://www.benzinga.com/general/education/22/03/20402600/this-day-in-market-history-the-priceline-ipo”
