According to regulatory filings, Healtheon expects to raise as much as $75 million based on its filing fee. It did not list a proposed price per share, nor the number of shares offered. Long an IPO candidate, the company had been expected to file for an offering this year.
The firm is the latest Internet company to jump on the IPO bandwagon, joining the likes of Inktomi and Broadcast.com, as well as planned IPOs by NetGrocer, GeoCities, and CitySearch, among others.
Healtheon chief executive Mike Long, Clark, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers hold sizable ownership in the company. The underwriters listed are Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Goldman, Sachs & Company, Hambrecht & Quist, and Volpe Brown Whelan & Company.
The company lost $21.4 million for the six months ended June 30, up from a loss of $13.3 million for the like period a year earlier. Revenue for the latest six-month period was $20.7 million, up from $4.3 million a year ago. As of June 30, the company had $12.8 million in cash and short-term investments. The company began operations in January 1996.
"The company intends to continue investing heavily in acquisitions, infrastructure development, application development, and sales and marketing," Healtheon said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "As a result, the company expects to incur substantial operating losses at least through 1999."
In explaining the rationale for the filing, Healtheon said: "The principal purposes of this offering are to obtain additional capital, to create a public market for the company's common stock, to enhance the ability of the company to acquire other businesses, products or technologies, and to facilitate future access by the company to public equity markets."
Before the proposed IPO, United Health Care Corporation owned a 17 percent stake in Healtheon (8.7 million shares); Clark owned a 16.4 percent stake (8.5 million shares); Kleiner Perkins a 13.8 percent stake (7.3 million shares); and Long a 4.3 percent (1.7 million shares).
