The word running around Wall Street last week was look for a big June IPO calendar.
Judging from last’s week traffic featuring three small-cap deals and this week’s playbill of just two offerings, it was hard to imagine. But there is more to the market than the current IPO calendar. The recent flurry of activity at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s filing window paints a much brighter picture than the current agenda indicates.
Last week, ending on Friday, June 1, 2018, 12 companies filed plans to go public. The previous week, ending on May 25, there were 15 companies that filed plans to go public. The upshot: A total of 27 new IPOs jumped into the pipeline over the past two weeks. That’s a lot.
We have to go back four years to find more filings over a two-week period. For the week ending on June 20, 2014, the SEC data showed that 16 IPOs were filed and, for the week ending on June 27, 2014, another 17 companies filed plans to go public. That was a total of 33 new IPOs.
By the way, 2014 was one of the best years for IPOs. The SEC reported a total of 292 IPOs were priced that year. The previous single-year high traffic was 433 IPOs in 2000. If you remember, that was the twilight of the dot-com era.
From 2001 through 2017, June turned out 277 IPOs, according to the SEC, and the median average for June was 15 IPOs. June 2014 produced the highest volume with 29 deals, while June 2003 had the lowest traffic with just three IPOs.
Taiwan Streaming, NY Gene Therapy
Now flipping back to the present, this week’s calendar has two names on it looking to raise $157 million: M17 Entertainment (YQ proposed) and MeiraGTx Holdings (MGTX proposed)).
This week’s deals are expected to be priced near the end of the week. Below is a snapshot of each IPO.
M17 Entertainment Limited, based in Taiwan, runs the largest live music streaming platform in terms of revenue in Developed Asia, according to Frost & Sullivan, the prospectus says. The company says it is in the process of integrating its live streaming platform into its online dating applications.
MeiraGTx Holdings, based in New York City, is a clinical-stage gene therapy company developing treatments for disorders of the eye and the salivary gland. The company recently expanded its focus to include products to treat people with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). MeiraGTx is working on therapies for eye diseases, including a rare type of inherited blindness, as well as a treatment for xerostomia, a chronic dry mouth that is often a side effect of radiation for head and neck cancer.
(For more information about the above company and others on the IPO calendar, please check the profiles found on IPOScoop.com’s website.)
June’s Second Week
The week of June 11, 2018, has only one name so far. But anything can happen when the SEC’s filing window opens again for business on Monday morning.
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.