The IPO Buzz: All This and Twitter, Too

First, let’s take a look at the moonshot on Friday, Nov. 1^st.

 

Container Store Group (TCS) is a Coppell, Texas-based storage and organization specialty retailer operating 62 stores in 22 states and the District of Columbia. Its IPO produced an opening-day moonshot. The company priced 12.5 million shares at $18 each, ABOVE its original price range of $14 to $16. It opened Friday morning at $35 and closed at $36.20 – UP 101.1 percent from its initial offering price.

 

October’s IPO market deposited 32 public offerings at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s records. The last time we saw a busier month was six years ago. In November 2007, the IPO calendar priced 38 IPOs.

 

There’s a reason for everything. You don’t have to look any further than the major U.S. stock market indexes to find the reason why the IPO market is running like the wind. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index closed at record highs during the week of Oct. 28. The Nasdaq Composite Index is hovering near a 13-year high.

              

This week’s IPO calendar lists 16 IPOs expected to raise about $3.7 billion. Only time will tell whether this will be a sweet 16. So let’s jump to the “IPOs of Interest.”

 

 

Twitter is a global platform for public self-expression and conversation in real time that has caught on with millions ranging from public figures – everyone from the president to the pope – to influential types such as government officials and journalists – to private citizens. The Tweet – an instant message of 140 characters or less – has changed the way people communicate. The San Francisco-based company, founded in 2007, has 2,300 employees.

 

Twitter has “democratized content creation and distribution, enabling any voice to echo around the world instantly and unfiltered,” according to its prospectus. Twitter has more than 215 million monthly active users and more than 100 million daily active users. Twitter users “create approximately 500 million Tweets per day,” the company said. Among the Twitterati are sports teams, media outlets and brands.

 

Twitter plans to offer 70.0 million shares at $17 to $20 a share to raise an expected $1.295 billion. The IPO is expected to be priced on Wednesday evening and start trading on Thursday morning on the New York Stock Exchange. The joint-lead managers are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Securities, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank Securities. The co-managers are Allen & Company and CODE Advisors.

 

 

Barracuda Networks (CUDA – proposed) is a Campbell, California-based company that offers cloud-connected solutions for content security and data storage. The company counts some household names like Citibank, Coca-Cola, FedEx, Harvard University and IBM among its roster of more than 150,000 customers worldwide. Founded in 2003, Barracuda has 1,108 employees. Barracuda plans to offer 4.1 million shares at $18 to $21 a share to raise $80.7 million. The IPO will be priced on Tuesday evening to start trading on Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange. The joint-lead managers are Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Securities and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The co-managers are William Blair, Pacific Crest Securities and JMP Securities.

 

GlycoMimetics (GLYC – proposed) is a Gaithersburg, Maryland-based clinical-stage biotech company. Its mission is to discover and develop novel drugs to treat certain types of cancer, sickle cell anemia and other diseases in which carbohydrate biology plays a major role. Worth noting: The company has a collaboration with Pfizer Inc., the largest U.S. drugmaker and Dow component. Founded in 2003, the company has 28 employees.

 

GlycoMimetics plans to offer 4.0 million shares at $14 to $16 a share to raise $60.0 million. The IPO is expected to be priced on Thursday evening to start trading Friday morning on the Nasdaq Global Market. The joint-lead managers are Jefferies and Barclays. The co-managers are Stifel and Canaccord Genuity.

  

 

Wix.com (WIX- proposed) gives users cutting-edge technology and a cloud-based platform to design, host and manage free websites without having to learn how to design or code. The company, based in Tel Aviv, Israel, earns its revenues through premium upgrades that allow users to connect their websites to their own domains, remove Wix branding and add e-commerce capabilities. As of Sept. 30, 2013, the company had 706,780 premium subscriptions, according to its prospectus. Wix.com was founded in 2006 by three people – the brothers Avishai and Nadav Abrahami and Giora (Gig) Kaplan. Since then, Wix.com has expanded to 452 employees. The company also has offices in San Francisco and New York.

 

Wix.com plans to offer 7.7 million shares at $14.50 to $16.50 a share to raise $119.4 million. The company is offering about 5.5 million ordinary shares and the selling shareholders are selling about 2.2 million shares. The IPO is expected to be priced on Tuesday evening to start trading Wednesday morning on the Nasdaq Global Market. The joint-lead managers are J.P. Morgan Securities, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and RBC Capital Markets. The co-managers are Needham & Company and Oppenheimer & Co.

 

Looking into next week, the IPO calendar has five names. They are expected to raise about $1.1 billion. But more players could pop onto the calendar by the time that Monday, Nov. 11, rolls around.

 

Stay tuned.