Bankers are hustling in April, with seven IPOs expected to raise $1.7 billion during a four-day week. Wall Street will be closed for the Good Friday holiday on April 14. The start of Passover at sundown on Monday may mean that some offices will be running with leaner staffing this week.
Six of this week’s seven deals are new faces at the IPO window. A carryover from last week rounds out the list.
This month is shaping up to be a better-than-average April, based on IPO statistics going back to 2000. Over the last 17 Aprils, the median for this month is 14 IPOs. The median volume is $2.63 billion in April for that 17-year span, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
The first week of April 2017 produced five IPOs that raised $1.3 billion. If everything gets done this week, the April 2017 tally will rise to 12 IPOs and a volume of $3 billion – with two weeks to go before the end of the month.
In the Winner’s Circle
Last week’s big winner was Okta (OKTA), an identity management software provider that priced its IPO of 11 million shares at $17 each. Okta closed on Friday, its opening day, at $23.51, UP 38.3 percent from its IPO price.
The Brazilian airline Azul (AZUL – proposed) is the carryover from last week. The Brazilian market regulators suspended the IPO due to “a note that irregular advertising material was used during presentations to investors and confidential information related to demand and pricing of shares was released to the media,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
Two Names to Note
A couple of interesting items are on this week’s calendar. From all reports, they are Warrior Met Coal (MCC – proposed) and Yext (YEXT – proposed.)
Warrior Met Coal, based in Brookwood, Alabama, is a large scale, low-cost producer and exporter of premium met coal operating two highly productive underground mines in Alabama. Met coal, also known as metallurgical coal or coking coal, is an essential ingredient in steel production. In 2017, Warrior Met is expected to be the largest seaborne met coal supplier in the Atlantic Basin, according to Wood Mackenzie, a global energy, chemicals, renewables, metals and mining, research and consultancy group.
Bankers plan to price 16.7 million shares at $17 to $19 each on Wednesday evening, April 12, to trade Thursday morning, April 13, 2017, on the New York Stock Exchange.
Yext, based in New York City, is a technology company that gives businesses control over the digital knowledge about their people, places and products across the digital ecosystem. The company’s platform lets businesses manage their digital knowledge in the cloud and sync it to over 100 services, including Apple Maps, Bing, Cortana, Facebook, Google, Google Maps, Instagram, Siri and Yelp.
Bankers plan to price 10.5 million shares at $8 to $10 each on Wednesday evening, April 12, to trade Thursday morning, April 13, 2017, on the NYSE.
The other IPOs on this week’s calendar are:
- Azul (AZUL – proposed)- a Brazilian airline;
- Cadence Bancorporation(CADE – proposed) – a Houston bank;
- Netshoes (Cayman) (NETS – proposed) – a Brazilian sports and lifestyle online retailer offering boots, shoes, sandals, pants, team shirts, uniforms, coats, jackets, shorts, bags, gloves, balls, caps, socks, glasses, watches, bicycles, supplements and sporting goods in Latin America;
- Tocagen (TOCA – proposed)- a San Diego clinical-stage, cancer-selective gene therapy company focused on developing first-in-class, broadly applicable product candidates designed to activate a patient’s immune system against their own cancer from within,
- Vantage Energy Acquisition (VEACU – proposed)- an Irving, Texas-based special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC) formed to make investments in energy and natural resources, with an emphasis on investments in businesses and/or assets in the upstream and midstream energy sectors, principally in North America.
(For more information, please check their profiles on IPOScoop.com’s website.)
Looking Ahead
This brings us to the week of April 17. Its IPO calendar is “clean and green” for now. However, that could change when the SEC’s filing window opens for business on Monday, April 10.
Stay tuned.
Disclosure: Neither the author nor anyone else on the IPOScoop.com staff has a position in any stocks mentioned, nor do we trade or invest in IPOs. The author and IPOScoop.com staff do not issue advice, recommendations or opinion.