The IPO Buzz: Dancing with LULU

 
Topping a list of seven deals are an athletic apparel designer and retailer and a Bermuda-based reinsurance provider. The calendar is looking to raise about $1.3 billion.
 
Lululemon Athletica (Nasdaq: LULU proposed) is a Vancouver, British Columbia-based designer and retailer of women’s clothing designed for yoga, dance. It operates about 60 franchised and company-owned stores, mostly in Canada.
 
Lululemon plans to price 18.2 million shares at $10 to $12 each to raise $200.2 million. The IPO is expected to start trading on Friday, July 27.
 
Here’s the buzz: Lululemon’s revenues and profits are soaring. For the fiscal year ended on January 2007, the company reported revenues of $148.9 million, up from $84.1 million in 2006, and up from $40.7 million in 2005. And Lululemon is profitable. For the year ended January 2007, the company reported net income of $7.6 million, up from $1.4 million in 2006, and a loss of $1.4 million in 2005.
 
People have been comparing Lululemon with Under Armour (NYSE UA), the Baltimore-based athletic designer and retail apparel company. On Nov. 11, 2005, Under Armour priced its IPO at $13 per share. It closed its opening day at $25.30 and ended at $55.12 on July 20, 2007, UP 324 percent from its initial offering price.
 
Validus Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: VR proposed), is a Hamilton, Bermuda-based holding company that operates through its subsidiary, Validus Re. The company offers property and casualty reinsurance to insurers in the United States, Europe and Latin America. In addition, Validus provides reinsurance for aerospace, energy and marine, personal risk, and workers’ compensation catastrophe purposes.
 
Validus plans to price 15.7 million shares at $24 to $26 each to raise $391.5 million. The IPO is expected to start trading on Wednesday, July 25.
 
The story about this one is that it is on the IPO  professionals’ “Most Wanted” list at press time. Not all the reinsurance IPOs have worked, but the last one did. It was Greenlight Capital Re (Nasdaq: GLRE), based in the Cayman Islands. Its IPO was priced at $19 per share on May 23. That was above its filing range of $16 to $18 per share. It closed its opening day at $24.03 and ended on Friday, July 20, at $23.02, still up 21.2 percent.
 
The Week That Was
Last week, let’s just say that some things didn’t go as planned. On Thursday morning, July 19, Kevin R. Davis, CEO of MF Global Ltd. (NYSE: MF), stepped up to the podium and rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate launching his company’s IPO. It crashed on take-off.
 
The deal was priced at $30 per share, down sharply from its original filing range of $36 to $39. The IPO opened at $29.37 and went south. MF Global closed Friday at $26.55, DOWN 11.5 percent from its offering price, a victim of the subprime meltdown, according to published reports.
 
By Friday’s close, the Dow Jones U.S. Specialty Finance Index was starting to snuggle up to a bear market. It closed at 134.72, DOWN 18.9 percent from 166.08 on Feb. 22. A bear market comes into play with a 20 percent pullback from a previous closing high.
 
That, of course, places a question mark on the KKR and Och-Ziff Management Group offerings.
 
But Thursday was not – repeat, NOT — a complete disaster.
 
On Thursday afternoon, Jitemdra S. Saxen, CEO and co-founder of Netezza (NYSE: NZ), stepped up to the podium and rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate launching his company’s IPO. It soared on take-off.
 
The deal was priced at $12 per share, up from its filing range of $9 to $11. The IPO opened at $15, closed its opening day at $17.39, and finished on Friday at $17.24, UP 43.7 percent from its offering price.
 
What’s the message? Technology IPOs were still in play. (Netezza calls itself the leader in the global data warehouse applicance market. Its claim to fame, according to its Web site: If your company is drowning in data, its products help you track and analyze what you need – fast.)