The IPO Buzz: February Gold Rush After A Hot January

February began with a gold rush of healthcare companies landing on the IPO Calendar early today – an astonishing run after a record January. The pace was so fast and furious that it turned heads on Wall Street. A total of 22 deals – 15 IPOs and seven SPACs – are on tap so far this week. Bankers now expect to raise about $6.14 billion in IPO proceeds. The IPO Calendar more than doubled in size from its status heading into the weekend, when nine deals – seven IPOs and two SPACs – were scheduled for pricing this week, with estimated proceeds at $3.04 billion.

February’s fast start followed a red-hot January. A total of 118 IPOs, including 88 unit offerings, were priced in January 2021. With that total, January 2021 set a record for the number of IPOs priced in a single month. It pushed October 1996, with 109 IPOs priced, out of the limelight and into the No. 2 spot, IPOScoop’s records show.

“I guess they want to get all these deals done while the market’s still going strong,” a senior trader said.

The U.S. stock market roared back on Monday after getting rocked last week by the Reddit-driven GameStop frenzy.

Eight healthcare companies, mostly biotechs, filed terms for their IPOs early today with the SEC. They quickly popped onto this week’s IPO Calendar.  This group includes Immunocore (IMCR proposed), which is developing a drug to treat metastatic uveal cancer, a cancer that attacks the iris of the eye, and Lucira Health (LHDX proposed), which received FDA approval in November of its home-use disposable COVID-19 test kit.

The spigot remains wide open for SPACs (special-purpose acquisition companies), based on the recent flood of SEC filings. So before this week is over, it’s likely that up to 20 or so SPAC unit offerings could get priced as well.

ON24, Inc. (ONTF proposed) is “the deal of the week,” according to the veteran IPO professionals.

ON24 provides a cloud-based digital platform that lets businesses host interactive webinars, large-scale virtual events and multimedia content experiences. The San Francisco-based company said that as of Sept. 30, 2020, ON24 had over 1,900 customers in more than 40 countries, including three of the five largest global tech companies and four of the five largest U.S. banks, according to the prospectus.

Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Keybanc Capital Markets are the joint book-runners of the ON24 deal. This is an IPO of 8.6 million shares at $45 to $50 each to trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

For a full list of this week’s IPOs, please click on the link here to our IPO Calendar.

For more information about the companies planning to go public, please click on their names in the IPO Calendar, please click on the hyperlink on each company’s name and check out the IPO Profile on IPOScoop.com.

Week of Feb. 8

One IPO – Viant Technology (DSP proposed) – climbed onto next week’s IPO Calendar after disclosing terms in an SEC filing early today. But more names are likely to slip onto the pricing launch pad for this week and next as the filings keep flowing into the SEC over the coming days.

Stay tuned.

(For more information about these companies, please click the hyperlinks, which will take you to the IPO profiles on IPOScoop.com.)

(Never trade on proposed symbols. You might wind up owning something on the OTC Bulletin Board.)

Disclosure: Nobody on the IPOScoop.com staff has a position in any stocks mentioned above, nor do they trade or invest in IPOs. The IPOScoop.com staff does not issue advice, recommendations or opinions.

Disclaimer: A SCOOP Rating (Wall Street Consensus of Opening-day Premiums), is a general consensus taken, at press time, from Wall Street and investment professionals concerning how well an IPO might perform when it starts trading. The SCOOP Rating does not reflect the opinions of anyone associated with IPOScoop.com. The SCOOP ratings should not be taken as investment advice. The rating merely reflects the opinion of the professionals at the time of publication and is subject to last-minute changes due to market conditions, changes in a specific offering and other factors, such as changes in the proposed offering terms and the shifting of investor interest in the IPO. The information offered is taken from sources we believe to be reliable, but we cannot guarantee the accuracy.