Tech IPOs Hit Comeback Trail

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Tech IPOs seemed like a distant memory during the darkest days of the economic downturn, but a handful of companies are now taking the public plunge, as evidenced by Fortinet's S-1 filing this week and the eagerly anticipated debut of health care IT company Emdeon.

Electronic billing specialist Emdeon hopes to raise up to $382 million in its IPO, which is expected this week. The Nashville, Tenn.-based firm handled half of all the electronic health care transactions in the U.S. last year, and is seen as well positioned to exploit President Obama's ambitious health care agenda.

Security specialist Fortinet, which competes with McAfee(MFE), Cisco(CSCO) and Check Point(CHKP), expects to earn up to $100 million in its IPO, according to documents filed with the SEC Monday, underlining the improved climate for public offerings.

"The days of companies sitting in the IPO pipeline until we grew old are ending," said Scott Sweet, principal researcher of analyst firm IPOBoutique.com. "The performance of the recent IPOs, with few exceptions, has been very good."

Last week, for example, Avago Technologies(AVGO) and CDC Software(CDCS) began trading as public companies, just a few weeks after software specialist LogMeIn(LOGM) launched its own IPO.

Other tech-related offerings this year include restaurant reservation Web site OpenTable(OPEN), network management software company SolarWinds(SWI), hi-res imagery specialist DigitalGlobe(DGI) and language learning software firm Rosetta Stone(RST).

This momentum looks set to continue. In addition to Fortinet, private equity-backed genealogical Web site Ancestry.com recently filed its S-1, although Emdeon is grabbing most of this week's attention.