Om Malik reports on Atheros's upcoming IPO: It's not hot, it's superheated, with a sixfold oversubscription to the number of shares potentially available at the initial public offering. Before the recent surge in IPOs, Atheros would have been a takeover target; now it's valuing itself in the open market, which could dramatically raise its asking price for a company trying to get a wedge into manufacturing 802.11a and a/g chipsets.
This should also, by the way, be an interested test of the post-dotcom IPO market in which shares were distributed to favored parties who would turn them quickly, and those who bought in on day one were disappointed on day two through infinity. With new rules and watchdogs watching, I'll be curious to see if Atheros's price rises. A good IPO should see the stock priced correctly: its opening price shouldn't be too much higher than the IPO price, or the company left money on the table.