The IPO Buzz: Cash and Carry

Four deals are on this week’s IPO calendar. The companies expect to raise about $454 million. The IPO professionals have zeroed in on one:

 

Green Dot (GDOT – proposed) is a California-based provider of reloadable prepaid MasterCard and Visa debit cards -– the digital version of cash and carry. No credit check or bank account is required. Green Dot offers its services in about 50,000 retail stores located in the United States. Some of its major retail partners include Wal-Mart, Kmart, CVS and Walgreens.

 

The IPO’s terms are straightforward. Green Dot plans to price 3.85 million shares of Class A common stock at $32 to $35. It expects to raise about $129 million. The IPO is scheduled to be priced on Wednesday evening, July 21, to start trading on Thursday morning.

 

Note: All the shares being offered are by selling shareholders.

 

Financially, Green Dot is sound.

 

For the three months ending March 31, 2010, Green Dot reported net income of $4.4 million, or 44 cents per share, on revenues of $92.8 million. All of those numbers are up from the same period a year ago, when Green Dot reported net income of $3.5 million, or 29 cents per share, on revenues of $60.7 million.

 

Green Dot hails from the financial services, which has been outperforming the broad stock market. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission assigned the Primary Standard Industrial Classification Code Number of 6199 to Green Dot.

 

At the close on Friday, July 16, Google’s Consumer Financial Services Index was down 5.49 percent for the year to date, compared with a drop of 6.73 percent for the S&P 500 Index.

 

Last week was a busy one for bankers. They priced four IPOs and raised slightly over $1 billion. In addition, six companies filed to go public hoping to raise about $$1.2 billion, another five filed amendments, and two jumped onto the IPO calendar.

 

The two newcomers to the IPO calendar are:

Envestnet (ENV – proposed) is a Chicago-based provider of technology-enabled, Web-based investment solutions and services to financial advisers. It filed to offer 7.7 million shares at $12 to $14 each to raise about $100 million. The deal is expected to be priced Wednesday evening, July 28, to start trading on Thursday.

 

Molycorp (MCP – proposed) of Greenwood Village, Colorado is the only rare earth excide (REO) producer in the Western Hemisphere. It owns the world’s largest, most fully developed rare earth project outside of China. For those who didn’t pay attention in earth science class, rare earth minerals are used in, among other things, the batteries for hybrid vehicles. Molycorp filed to offer 28.1 million shares at $15 to $17 each to raise about $450 million. The deal is expected to be priced Wednesday evening, July 28, to start trading on Thursday.

 

But more on these next week, which will be July’s last hurrah.