In 2006, 50 investment bankers, or Wall Street’s jockeys if you wish, saddled up 201 IPOs, excluding 39 unit offerings.  

 

On Wall Street, everyone lives by the Golden Rule: Those who have the gold make the rules. It became very apparent that the Golden Rule applied at the IPO Downs in 2006.

 

Consider this: 24 of the 50 bankers had a single lead or joint-lead manager credit each. Another six bankers had two lead or joint-lead manager credits each. The remaining 20 bankers divvied up the rest of the deals.

 

Once again, it was the Street’s giants who dominated the IPO Derby.

 

Here’s the unofficial finish for the top jockeys in 2006’s IPO Derby, based on the number of lead and/or joint-lead credits:

 

Here’s their dollar volume raised (unofficial count):

 

Then the big question: “Who of the above made the most amount of money for their IPO buyers?” Running into the first week of 2007, the unofficial answer was:

 

Goldman Sachs:

             (Dec. 30, 2005 through Jan. 5, 2007)

 

JPMorgan:

             (Dec. 30, 2005 through Jan. 5, 2007)

 

Credit Suisse:

             (Dec. 30, 2005 through Jan. 5, 2007)

 

Merrill Lynch:

             (Dec. 30, 2005 through Jan. 5, 2007)

 

Morgan Stanley:

            (Dec. 30, 2005 through Jan. 5, 2007)

 

Citigroup:

            (Dec. 30, 2005 through Jan. 5, 2007)

 

UBS Investment Bank:

            (Dec. 30, 2005 through Jan. 5, 2007)

 

Lehman Brothers:

             (Dec. 30, 2005 through Jan. 5, 2007)

 

Here how the 2006 IPO Scorecard looked at the closing bell on Friday, Jan. 5, 2007:

 

IPOs Priced: 201

Up: 139

Down: 60

Unchanged: 2

Win-Loss percentage: 69.7 percent

Average Gain: 25 percent

Nasdaq Composite: up 10.38 percent

(Dec. 30, 2005 though Jan. 5, 2007)

 

 

There were many stories coming from the IPO Downs last week. But one began to break away from the pack. Since the Labor Day break, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) has ridden home more winners than any other banker.

 

True, the numbers are not overwhelming, just eight deals, but Goldman Sachs’ name can be found on the first line of four of these prospectuses. The firm acted as lead or joint-lead manager in the hottest aftermarket performers over the last three weeks.

 

Last week’s winner, and the top one since the post-Labor Day break, was the Sept. 20 pricing of Riverbed Technology (Nasdaq: RVBD), a San Francisco-based developer of high-performance appliances for optimizing wide area networks. The IPO closed on Friday, Sept. 22, at $16.75 per share, UP a sizzling 71.8 percent from its initial offering price of $9.75 per share.

 

Goldman Sachs was the lead manager for the deal.

 

The second-hottest aftermarket performer since the beginning of the month was the Sept. 6 pricing of New Oriental Education & Technology Group (NYSE: EDU), a Beijing-based provider of educational programs. The IPO closed on Friday, Sept. 22 at $25.60 per share, UP 70.7 percent from its initial offering price of $15 per share.

 

Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs (Asia) were the joint-lead managers for the deal.

 

There’s more. Goldman Sachs (Asia) and UBS Investment Bank plan to price 20 million American Depositary Shares of Mindray Medical International (NYSE: MR proposed) at $10 to $12 each to raise $220 million on Thursday evening.  

 

Guess which deal tops this week’s list of “most wanted” IPO?

 

Now back to last week. Seven IPOs were priced during the week of Sept. 18, 2006. Six rode into the winner’s circle. There was one lonely loser. And one horse never made it out of the starting gate.

 

DivX (Nasdaq: DIVX), the San Diego-based provider of digital video compression software, was one of the winners.

 

The deal was reported as heating up earlier in the week, and its SCOOP rating was increased to 4 Stars, up from 3 Stars. The rumors were confirmed when bankers priced 9.1 million shares at $16 each on Thursday evening. That was up about 23 percent from its filing range of $12 to $14 per share. So bankers raked some money off the table.

 

But the fun didn’t stop there. The DivX IPO opened at a premium of $3.50 per share when it started trading at $19.50.

 

Hawkeye Holdings (NYSE: HWY proposed), the Iowa Falls, Iowa-based the nation’s third largest ethanol producer, was postponed on Monday.

 

When you look at what has happened to the other two big ethanol producers that have gone public, that was not too surprising. They were:

 

— VeraSun Energy (NYSE: VSE), based in Brookings, South Dakota, priced its IPO on June 13 at $23 per share and the stock closed its opening day at $30. Fast forward to Sept. 22, when VeraSun closed at $16.60, DOWN 27.8 percent from its initial offering price.

 

— Aventine Renewable Energy (NYSE: AVR), based in Perkins, Illinois, priced its IPO on June 28 at $43 per share and closed its opening day at $38.37. Fast forward to Sept. 22, when Aventine closed at $20.25, DOWN 52.9 percent from its initial offering price.

 

The numbers tell the story. The price of oil has tumbled from its record high set on July 14 of $78.40 per barrel to its close on Friday at $60.55, DOWN about 23 percent. As oil prices slid, the interest in alternative energy sources faded. And so did investors’ appetite for ethanol IPOs.

 

Porter Bancorp (Nasdaq: PBIB), a Louisville, Kentucky-based bank holding company, priced its IPO at $24 per share on Thursday evening. The deal tanked. It closed its opening-day at $23, DOWN 4.17 percent from its initial offering price.

 

This was puzzling because the opening premiums from the consensus ranged from a gain of 50 cents per share to as high as $2 per share. Everybody got fooled. But Wall Street has been known for surprises.

 

Besides the sharp aftermarket performance of Riverbed Technology, the other pleasant surprise came from CommVault Systems (Nasdaq: CVLT), the Oceanport, New Jersey-based data management software provider.

 

CommVault priced its IPO at $14.50 per share, on the high end of its filing range of $12.50 to $14.50 per share on Thursday evening. The IPO opened at $16 and closed at $17, UP 17.2 percent from its initial offering price.

 

The IPO consensus was an opening premium of 50 cents to $1 per share, or a 2-Star SCOOP rating. It turned in a 3-Star aftermarket performance.

 

The cloud overhanging the deal was that some folks considered it to be a bailout for Credit Suisse and affiliates.

 

Consider this: Of the $161.1 million raised from the offering, $66.9 million went to selling shareholders. And the company planned to pay $101.8 million “in satisfaction of amounts due on our Series A, B, C, D and E preferred stock upon its conversion into common stock.”

 

What caught the eye of investors were CommVault’s numbers. For the year that ended Dec. 31, 2005, CommVault reported net income of $5.1 million on revenues of $109.4 million, compared with three years earlier, when it recorded a net loss of $35.5 million on revenues of $30.8 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2002.

 

In today’s IPO market, the answer is obvious: Investors like winning numbers. CommVault had them.