The IPO Buzz: Twilight Zone vs. Reality

May’s calendar produced 28 IPOs, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s filings. You have to reach back five-and-a-half years to November 2007 for a busier month. That calendar from yesteryear produced 38 IPOs.

 

But there’s more to June than its first week. Looking deeper into June’s calendar, there are another five IPOs expecting to raise over $8 billion. That’s right: EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS – so much for the “summer doldrums” for the IPO market. (Cancel your trip to the twilight zone.)

 

The myth of “the summer doldrums” has been around longer than anybody can remember, and many actually believe it. But the facts don’t support this belief. Let the numbers speak for themselves:

 

From 1970 through 2012, the summer months of June, July and August produced 3,552 IPOs out of a grand total of 13,049 IPOs priced over that 43-year time frame. This amounted to 27.2 percent of the annual IPO traffic – or almost 10 percent above the average of 25 percent of the year’s IPO volume for a three-month period.

 

Now let’s move to the present. June’s opening week lists four IPOs that are expected to raise about $435 million. Among them are a REIT, a Chinese e-commerce company and a software solution provider with the words “cloud computing” buried in its preliminary prospectus.

 

Colony American Homes is a Scottsdale, Arizona-based real estate investment trust formed to acquire, own, renovate, lease and manage single-family properties. It plans to price 20 million shares at $11.50 to $13 each on Wednesday evening to trade Thursday morning on the New York Stock Exchange under the proposed symbol “CAHS.”

 

Colony American Homes is offering all the shares in the underwriting and expects to have about 248.7 million shares outstanding after the offering. Formed in 2012, the company has a portfolio of 8,764 wholly owned homes and 1,167 homes owned in a joint venture. The homes are located in Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Texas.

 

The joint-lead managers are: Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and BofA Merrill Lynch. The co-managers are: FBR and Zelman Partners.

 

LightinTheBox Holding Co., Ltd. is a Beijing-based global online retailer delivering products in 17 major languages and covering more than 80 percent of Internet users globally. The company is an online mall offering products ranging from bridesmaid’s dresses, jewelry and wigs to home security systems and cellphones. (The product mix seems designed for those who have earned a black belt in shopping.)

 

LightinTheBox Holding plans to price 8.3 million American Depositary Shares (ADSs) at $8.50 to $10.50 each on Wednesday evening to trade Thursday morning on the New York Stock Exchange under the proposed symbol “LITB.” Each ADS represents 2 Ordinary Shares.

 

The company is offering all the shares in the underwriting and expects to have about 97.8 million Ordinary Shares outstanding after the offering. Formed in 2007, the company has about 1,128 employees.

 

For the three months that ended on March 31, 2013, LightinTheBox Holding reported a net income of $2.6 million on revenues of $73.3 million, compared with a net loss of $3 million on revenues of $36.9 million for the same period a year ago.

 

The joint-lead managers are: Credit Suisse and Stifel. The co-managers are: Pacific Crest Securities, Oppenheimer and China Renaissance Securities.

 

Textura is a Deerfield, Illinois-based provider of on-demand business collaboration software solutions for the commercial construction industry. Textura software lets commercial contractors tap into the cloud for efficient online payment systems, bidding and sharing information to manage projects. The company plans to price 4 million shares at $13 to $15 each on Thursday evening to trade Friday morning on the New York Stock Exchange under the proposed symbol “TXTR.”

 

Textura is offering all the shares in the underwriting and expects to have about 21 million shares outstanding after the offering. The company was formed in 2004. It has about 287 employees.

 

For the three months that ended on March 31, 2013, Textura reported a net loss of $10.9 million on revenues of $15.3 million, compared with a net loss of $9.5 million on revenues of $9.7 million for the same period a year ago.

 

The joint-lead managers are: Credit Suisse and William Blair. The co-managers are: JMP Securities, Oppenheimer and Barrington Research.

 

This brings us to next week. At press time, there were three IPOs on the calendar for the week of June 10, 2013. They expect to raise about $1.2 billion. That figure could easily expand. In today’s IPO market, the calendar can fill up quickly.

 

Stay tuned.