Consider this: The Dow Jones Food Products Index closed Friday, March 22, 2013, at 365.90, UP 17.1 percent from 312.53 on Dec. 31, 2012. That’s nearly twice as much as the S&P 500 Index. On Friday, the S&P 500 was UP 9.2 percent for the year. Now let’s go on to this week’s IPO calendar.
The holiday-shortened week – which opens with Passover at sundown on Monday and closes with Good Friday – gives Wall Street wizards just three days to weave their IPO magic. The calendar has four deals: two small-cap offerings of about $6 million each, a closed-end investment management company and a food product distributor, which hopes to raise about half a billion dollars. Let’s take a closer look at the big boy.
Food, Glorious Food
Pinnacle Foods plans to price 29 million shares at $18 to $20 each on Wednesday evening. The IPO is expected to start trading Thursday morning on the New York Stock Exchange under the proposed symbol “PF.” The joint-lead managers are Barclays and BofA Merrill Lynch. The co-managers are Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS Investment Bank, Blackstone Capital Markets, BMO Capital Markets, C.L. King & Associates, Janney Montgomery Scott, Macquarie Capital, Piper Jaffray, Stephens and Stifel.
Based in Parsippany, New Jersey, Pinnacle Foods is a holding company that manufactures, markets, and distributes a broad line of foods to grocery-store chains throughout the United States. In addition to the brands mentioned above, Pinnacle markets Armour, Hungry-Man, Log Cabin, Mrs. Paul’s and others. For the 53-week period ended Dec. 30, 2012, Pinnacle reported net income of $52.6 million on revenues of $2.48 billion. (Note: That is not a misprint. The prospectus cites a 53-week period that ended on Dec. 30, 2012.) Formed in 2006, the company has about 3,700 employees.
Pinnacle plans to sell all of the shares in the offering. It expects to have about 112.9 million shares outstanding after the offering.
This brings us to next week. The calendar is “clean and green” for now, but not to worry. The pipeline, for what it’s worth, is building. Last week, six companies filed to go public, and another three updated their registrations.
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 opinions.