The opera returns from the "prehistory" of the Internet to the Stock Exchange

The Navigator Opera from the mid-1990s, when PCs used Windows 95 and Steve Jobs performed Next Computer after ] Apple went back to public markets

Opera debuted at Nasdaq Global Select Market this Friday, having sold up to $ 115 million in shares.

Inventories rose up to 30% in the early trading hours in New York, reaching $ 15.62, but eventually closed at 8.33%, at $ 13.

The $ 12 stock market exit price was at the high end of the marketed range.

"We have a good underlying strategy that we have developed as a private enterprise," said Opera CFO Frode Jacobsen . "We have been working on this for almost two years and we are very satisfied with the results today."

According to his perspective, the company plans to use the money for research and development in an artificial intelligence software ] to be used with its discovery services. content, as well as marketing, partnerships and acquisitions.

Created by two engineers of the Norwegian company Telenor, Jon von Tetzchner and Geir ] Ivarsoy the first major version of the Windows browser for Microsoft was Opera 2.1, published in 1997 .

Netscape Navigator – predecessor of Mozilla Firefox – was the winner of the first browser battle, while Internet Explorer patiently waited for its chance before becoming so dominant decade after that led to the intervention of regulators.

Opera acquired a series of cult users, who scorned market leaders and helped cement their place as the third most popular browser in the world at that time. Von Tetzchner's refusal to take the company to public markets during the infamous dotcom boom also helped to make Opera one of the few survivors of the subsequent collapse , with eBay and Amazon . 19659012] Today Opera generates more than 50% of its turnover thanks to its badociation with Google of Alphabet and Yandex based in Moscow, and mentions the dependency of 39 a small number of companies for the majority of their profits. a significant risk factor in your perspective.

In the three months to March 31, Opera recorded a net profit of $ 6.6 million based on revenues of $ 39.4 million, which increased by about 55 percent over the same period last year. cent compared to the same quarter of last year

Jacobsen described the partnership with Google as " mutually beneficial ."

"We worked with Google for more than a decade," he said.

"We periodically renewed our contract with them, the last time it was late 2017 and it was a three year extension, where Google has an option to extend for a fourth year too."

The exit of the stock market marks his return to the public life. Despite von Tetzchner's reluctance, the company began trading on the Oslo Stock Exchange in 2004, raising some $ 20 million. Two years later, he launched Opera Mini, a mobile browser that allowed customers to explore large Web sites through the limited cellular data networks that existed at that time.

browser wars' was fierce between Internet Explorer, Firefox and a start Google Chrome at the end of the decade, the future of Opera has changed course. Ivarsoy died in 2006 and von Tetzchner left the company in 2011 after disagreeing with investors about the company's management.

"I think that initially they only wanted to sell the business," von Tetzchner said. . "It's there that investors were focused, they still believed they could get better returns this way."

A purchase of the majority stake of one billion dollars by a consortium of Chinese investors was expected for 2016, but the operation did not get government approval and never materialized. The company, however, has agreed to sell only its browser – now called Opera – for $ 575 million, which is listed on the Nasdaq this Friday.

The rest of the original company was renamed Otello Corporation in 2017 and still marketed in Oslo.

In 2018, Opera's mobile and desktop browsers accounted for 3.5% of the global market, according to data compiled by StatCounter, compared to about 59% of the market. , Chrome .

L & # 39; artificial intelligence and d & # 39; Other software, which boosts content discovery, helps foster the engagement and retention of users, Jacobsen said.

"Nearly a quarter of our employees work on Opera News and on the artificial intelligence platform," he added. "We are investing a lot in that and have had a lot of traction."

China International Capital Corporation Hong Kong Securities and Citigroup acted as joint brokers in the early days of Opera on the Nasdaq.