“It ain’t over till it’s over.” That’s one of baseball legend Yogi Berra’s most famous lines. And that pretty well sums up the IPO market for August 2018.
Historical data show the IPO traffic generally dries up in mid-August. This year, though, was different. Every week you would think that the new-issue calendar was done for the summer, a banker or two would sneak a new name out there for investors to bite into. It happened again for the final week of August.
Let’s take a look.
Speeding Up a SPAC
Longevity Acquisition {LOACU proposed) was initially scheduled to be priced during the first week of September. By the end of last week, Longevity’s bankers had accelerated the deal to be priced on Tuesday evening, Aug. 28, for trading on Wednesday morning.
But the word around Wall Street is that most of the IPO players are said to be far, far away. The pace has been so slow that it has tested the patience of those who didn’t fly off to Fiji or other exotic locales. For example, one trader took to answering his phone: “Rip Van Winkle.”
Nevertheless, this week’s IPO Calendar has Longevity, which plans to offer 4 million units at $10 each to raise $40 million. Based in Shanghai, Longevity is a blank check or special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC). It intends to focus on businesses that have their primary operations in China.
(For more information about the offering, please check the profile found on the IPOScoop.com website.)
Building a Healthy Pipeline
Now turning the eye to the future, it looks bright.
Even though there is nothing on the IPO Calendar for the first week of September, the pipeline has been building, according to the U.S. Securities and Commission’s filing window. Over the last three weeks, 21 companies filed for IPOs. They expect to raise $2.72 billion.
When there’s an SEC filing, an IPO can’t be too far behind. We will have to wait and see what the winds of Wall Street will bring us when bankers come back to work after Labor Day, which will be observed next Monday on Sept. 3, 2018.
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.