Category Archives: The IPO Buzz

 

Except for a small bio-IPO wiggling its way into the market during the last two weeks of August, the calendar has been dormant. The IPO filing window has not.

 

Even Wall Street loves a parade – a Labor Day parade, that is – if it means the money keeps pouring in.

 

When the market launches its IPO calendar this week, it could  well be the final one for the Summer of 2013. Year after year, decade after decade, the IPO production line traditionally closes down during the last two weeks of August – vacation time ahead of the Labor Day break. This year looks no different.

 

When the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed on Friday, Aug. 2, at a record high, the S&P 500 Index finished on Friday at a record high and the Nasdaq Composite Index ended on Friday at a 13-year recovery high, this raised the question: Can the IPO market be far behind? Answer: It has arrived. You just don’t see it coming these days.

 

Last week was not a banner one for IPOs. Twelve companies went public with mixed results. Four IPOs finished their opening day as winners, six as losers and the other two were unchanged. The bio-IPO sector gave us a couple of noteworthy pops and flops. Their performance should not have surprised anyone. It was all right there in their respective prospectuses.

 

Last week’s best-performing IPO, OncoMed Pharmaceuticals (OMED ), started trading 65.6 percent above its initial offering price. This should not have come as a surprise. The clue to this biotech IPO’s winning performance can be found on the cover of its prospectus. This week’s calendar has a few more IPOs sending the same signal. All you have to do is look.

 

 

The IPO market exploded out of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s filing window with the fury of a summer storm. Starting last Monday, five companies filed plans to go public, 15 companies updated their previous filings and 14 IPOs hit the calendar. That’s not bad for the dog days of summer.

 

 

With one eye on the stock market and the other on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s filing window, the IPO calendar sits in wait for 2013’s second half to begin.

 

The IPO market closed out the year’s first half with blazing guns. In June’s final week, bankers priced 11 IPOs. And there was more. On Friday, the last trading day of the month, the Street witnessed a rare event – an opening-day IPO moonshot. That’s when an IPO explodes for a gain of 100 percent or more. What a way to head into the traditional July 4^th holiday!

 

With one eye on the ticker tape and the other on Washington, D.C., the IPO market cruises into June’s final week. It has an ambitious calendar of nearly a dozen offerings in the first full trading week of summer. And it’s looking at what could be an interesting stock market.