Expansion and acquisition (1992–1995)
NetWorth became a public company after filing its initial public offering on the Nasdaq in November 1992.[16] The company became one of 1992's most promising IPOs after its ticker price rose doubled to $32 on its first trading day. Following the announcement of a quarterly loss in April 1993, the company's stock price dipped 43 percent to $10.75, down $8 in what The Wall Street Journal then called "the latest example of how chasing highly touted IPOs can quickly produce heavy losses".[17]
In 1994, IBM announced a partnership with NetWorth for the latter to act as an OEM for some of IBM's networking products. That same year, NetWorth expanded its manufacturing presence in Dallas by adding a production line for surface-mount PCBs.[4] In 1995, NetWorth made its first and only acquisition, purchasing the networking hardware company Network Resources Corporation (NRC) of San Francisco, California, for $22 million in cash and stock.[4][18] The company concluded fiscal year 1995 with $55 million in revenues while posting $24 million in losses due to the acquisition of NRC and a failed R&D project, which NetWorth had to write off entirely.[4]
In November 1995, Compaq announced their acquisition of NetWorth for $372 million in a stock swap. Compaq had recently acquired Thomas-Conrad, another networking company based in Austin, Texas, for a rumored $15 million.[19][20] The acquisition of NetWorth was finalized in December 1995.[21] Compaq absorbed NetWorth's assets, transferring them to their networking products division shortly thereafter while dropping the NetWorth name entirely, as had been done to Thomas-Conrad.[22]
Shortly following the sale of NetWorth, McHale founded another networking start-up, NetSpeed, in February 1996. An early provider of on-premises DSL modems for broadband Internet access, NetSpeed itself was acquired in 1998 by Cisco Systems.[23][24]
