Square (SQ – proposed) the San Francisco-based provider of mobile payment solutions, set its IPO pricing terms to offer 27 million shares at $11 to $13 each early on Friday morning, Nov. 6, 2015. That Securities and Exchange Commission filing created pandemonium. The financial media went wild.
The stock is expected to start trading on the morning of Nov. 19th – a week from Thursday – on the New York Stock Exchange.
Square’s news lit up the sky. Stories exploded like a volcano throwing flames in the air and belching lava down the mountainside into the Valley of IPOs. But before anyone gets too carried away with all the excitement, we have to get through this week first. It, too, could be interesting.
Health Care’s Moment of Truth
This week’s calendar resembles a full plate. Bankers plan to price eight IPOs. They expect to raise about $980 million. Four of this week’s eight deals are from the health-care sector and two are from the financial sector. Rounding out the calendar are a software packaging company and a telecommunications company. That one is Xtera Communications (XCOM – proposed) a carryover from last week.
Of late, health-care IPOs have struggled to get out the door, and last week GenSight Biologics was postponed due to market conditions. That pretty much says it all. Tuesday evening looks to be the “make or break time” for this week’s four health-care IPOs. All are scheduled to be priced Tuesday evening to trade Wednesday morning:
- Advanced Accelerator Applications S.A. (AAAP – proposed), based in Saint Genis Pouilly, France, is a radiopharmaceutical company that develops, makes and commercializes molecular nuclear medicine products to treat cancer and create diagnostic images of organs.
- Mesoblast Limited (MESO – proposed), based in Melbourne, Australia, is a regenerative medicine company specializing in developing stem-cell therapies for chronic heart failure and other extremely difficult-to-treat medical conditions. Its underlying shares have been trading on the Australian Stock Exchange since 2004.
- Voyager Therapeutics (VYGR – proposed), based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a clinical-stage gene therapy company working to develop treatments for patients suffering from severe diseases of the central nervous system, including advanced Parkinson’s disease.
- Wave Life Sciences Pte Ltd. (WVE – proposed), based in Singapore, is a preclinical biopharmaceutical company working to develop a synthetic chemistry drug platform to commercialize a pipeline of nucleic acid therapeutic candidates.
Learning and Lending
There are two deals on the calendar that are attracting some interest from the IPO players:
- Instructure (INST – proposed), based in Salt Lake City, Utah, provides a cloud-based learning management platform for academic institutions and companies worldwide.
- loanDepot (LDI – proposed), based in Foothill Ranch, California, provides mortgage and non-mortgage loan products. It offers a suite of consumer credit products ranging from home loans to unsecured personal loans.
Another deal from the bank sector:
- Equity Bancshares (EQBK – proposed), based in Wichita, Kansas, is a bank holding company. It provides a range of financial services primarily to businesses and business owners as well as individuals through a network of 25 full- service branches located in Kansas and Missouri.
(Note: For information on each of the above, please click through to IPOScoop.com’s Website to get general information, contact information, including prospectus, financials information and IPO profile.)
At press time, next week’s calendar had three deals and one of them is Square. But it is early – and anything can happen.
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.