Rackspace Tests The IPO Waters Today; Settles For Half The Price It Was Hoping For

rackspace-logo.pngAfter filing for an IPO last April in which it hoped to raise $400 million, Web hosting provider (and cloud-computing aspirant) Rackspace finally priced its IPO last night at $12.50 a share. That would have brought in $187.5 million, or half what it was hoping for. But it opened this morning at $10 (ticker: RAX). It’s been been going up since then to about $11.

And Rackspace is a solid company financially. But in this market, any IPO is a sign of hope (there were no VC-backed IPOs last quarter). Rackspace backed off from an IPO once before, in 2000. It’s been champing at the bit to go public for a long time. It looks like the shares are trading up. Let’s see where they end the day.

(Disclosure Rackspace is a TechCrunch advertiser).

Update: Rackspace ended its first day of trading at the same price where it opened: $10. Not a confidence builder for other IPO-aspirants.