Category Archives: The IPO Buzz

You won’t find Moonshot Alley on any street map of lower Manhattan. It is part of a place called the IPO market. Last week, three offerings found their way onto that elusive pathway and one made into the “IPO Hall of Fame” with a moonshot opening-day gain.

 

It was Twitter here, Twitter there, Twitter everywhere, a lot of wing flapping over Twitter’s IPO, but no flying. That’s the way things work under the JOBS Act of 2012.

 

 

The post-Labor Day IPO market remained quiet last week, but U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing window was alive with IPO traffic. The signals are flashing that the calendar is coming back to life in the final weeks of Indian summer.

 

 

Except for a small bio-IPO wiggling its way into the market during the last two weeks of August, the calendar has been dormant. The IPO filing window has not.

 

Even Wall Street loves a parade – a Labor Day parade, that is – if it means the money keeps pouring in.

 

When the market launches its IPO calendar this week, it could  well be the final one for the Summer of 2013. Year after year, decade after decade, the IPO production line traditionally closes down during the last two weeks of August – vacation time ahead of the Labor Day break. This year looks no different.

 

When the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed on Friday, Aug. 2, at a record high, the S&P 500 Index finished on Friday at a record high and the Nasdaq Composite Index ended on Friday at a 13-year recovery high, this raised the question: Can the IPO market be far behind? Answer: It has arrived. You just don’t see it coming these days.

 

Last week was not a banner one for IPOs. Twelve companies went public with mixed results. Four IPOs finished their opening day as winners, six as losers and the other two were unchanged. The bio-IPO sector gave us a couple of noteworthy pops and flops. Their performance should not have surprised anyone. It was all right there in their respective prospectuses.

 

Last week’s best-performing IPO, OncoMed Pharmaceuticals (OMED ), started trading 65.6 percent above its initial offering price. This should not have come as a surprise. The clue to this biotech IPO’s winning performance can be found on the cover of its prospectus. This week’s calendar has a few more IPOs sending the same signal. All you have to do is look.

 

 

The IPO market exploded out of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s filing window with the fury of a summer storm. Starting last Monday, five companies filed plans to go public, 15 companies updated their previous filings and 14 IPOs hit the calendar. That’s not bad for the dog days of summer.