The IPO Buzz: Sweet Run For The Roses

The first was the smashing success of the private-equity owned Kinder Morgan (KMI) IPO and, then, a rash of Friday afternoon filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
 
As the world knows by now, the Kinder Morgan IPO was a major news event, a huge success and everybody went home happy. The selling shareholders pocketed about $2.8 billion, investment bankers enriched themselves by $86 million and investors had 3.5 percent profit.
 
The Kinder Morgan deal drew its strength from the January 25th Nielsen Holdings (NLSN) offering. Nielsen was another P/E-owned company that priced a blockbuster IPO of $1.64 billion. Its stock closed Friday, Feb. 11, 2011, at $25.22 per share, UP 9.7 percent for its $23 per share offering price.
 
Here’s what’s important – Kinder Morgan and Nielsen are P/E-owned companies, a sector that had not only been out-of-favor of late, but on the “do-not-buy” list of IPO investors. Now with two home runs, the sector is in-play.
 
As talk swirled around the financial media last Friday about other P/E-owned companies going public (such as HCA  expecting to raise $4.6 billion and Toys “R” Us expecting to raise $800 million) something was overlooked – the SEC filing window.
 
The IPO yellow brick road runs through the SEC and things were popping.
 
Eight companies filed plans to go public last week expecting to raise about $1.6 billion, and five of those announced plans on Friday.
 
One was another blockbuster IPO from a P/E-owned company. Freescale Semiconductor Holdings I filed for an IPO to raise $1.15 billion.
 
But that’s not all the news.
 
Companies in the IPO pipeline started filing updated amendments announcing 2010 year-end financials. That’s a great sign.
 
When companies start refilling updated financials, they are getting ready to post their pricing terms and then leap on the IPO calendar. This trend started Friday afternoon.
 
The Kinder Morgan deal had been overhanging the IPO market and brought the traffic to a standstill. You can see that in this week’s calendar and next.
 
Now that blockbuster is out of the way, you can see the SEC filings lining up for a sweet run for the roses.
 
 
Disclosure: Neither the author nor anyone else on the IPOScoop.com staff has a position in any stocks mentioned, nor do they trade or invest in IPOs. The author and IPOScoop.com staff do not issue advice, recommendations or opinions.