More Money for Equinix

Thanksgiving is here, but the folks at Equinix could be forgiven for wondering if Christmas came early. On Friday, the Internet exchange operator raised $105 million by selling 5.5 million shares of common stock, with strong demand leading the company to issue 2 million shares more than initially planned. The Equinix sale, along with a $6.9 million initial public offering Nov. 10 by Access Integrated Technologies, marked the first public stock sales by American hosting specialists since Loudcloud's IPO in March 2001.

Concerns that the additional shares would dilute the company's stock price also proved unfounded. The new shares were priced at $20, and Equinix stock closed Friday at $22.35, and had risen further to $25.48 by yesterday's close. The Foster City, Calif. company's stock was at $3.39 a share on May 1.

In the past month Equinix has announced an expansion into a huge former Sprint data center in Silicon Valley, an expansion of hosting services it provides to Yahoo!, an agreement to host the Britannica.com web site, and an eight-site deployment by AboveNet. But a key element in the financial sector's enthusiasm for Equinix is the company's momentum selling to Wall Street itself. Last week the company launched the Equinix Financial Exchange, a service offering interconnections to accelerate electronic trading operations, several of which are hosted in its Chicago data center.