No deals are scheduled this week. So now is a good time to look up in the late summer IPO sky. You just might see some IPO stars shining more brightly than the rest.
A total of 21 IPOs priced this year have scored astonishing gains, as of the close on Friday, Aug. 28th. Those gains range from an increase of 100 percent, which means the stock has doubled its IPO price, to a jump of more than 400 percent from its IPO price, IPOScoop records show.
Seven of these deals – or a third of the IPO All-Stars Class of 2020 – scored opening-day moonshots. A moonshot occurs when an IPO doubles in price, up 100 percent or more, on its first day of trading.
BigCommerce (BIGC) leads the 2020 IPO All-Stars Parade with an eye-popping gain of 445.75 percent. The stock closed on Friday, Aug. 28th, at $130.98, up almost 450 percent from its IPO price of $24 on Aug. 4th. BigCommerce tripled its IPO price on Aug. 5th, its first day of trading, when it closed at $72.27.
BigCommerce, which provides an e-commerce software platform for retailers, is one of four technology IPOs in this all-star club. The other three are nCino (NCNO), Agora (API) and KingSoft Cloud Holdings (KC).
You can check out the performance of all 21 IPO All-Stars of 2020 by clicking on the Pricings tab on the IPOScoop home page, going to the 2020 Pricings, and clicking on the Return column, until you see returns posted from the largest gains listed at the top and continuing down in descending order.
Healthcare Rules
The healthcare sector dominates the IPO all-stars, accounting for 11 of the 21 IPOs in this group. Here are the top five healthcare IPO all-stars:
*Inari Medical (NARI) – Up 335.58 percent from its IPO price of $19 on May 21st. Inari closed at $82.76 on Friday, Aug. 28th.
*CureVac B.V. (CVAC) – Up 269.69 percent from its IPO price of $16 on Aug. 13th. CureVac closed at $59.15 on Friday, Aug. 28th.
*Schrodinger (SDGR) – Up 262.88 percent from its IPO price of $17 on Feb. 5th. Schrodinger closed at $61.59 on Friday, Aug. 28th.
*Keros Therapeutics (KROS) – Up 231.63 percent from its IPO price of $16 on April 7th. Keros Therapeutics closed at $53.06 on Friday, Aug. 28th.
*Berkeley Lights (BLI) – Up 207.77 percent from its IPO price at $22 on July 16th. Berkeley Lights closed at $67.71 on Friday, Aug. 28th, more than tripling its IPO price.
Hitting the Pause Button
Wall Street’s IPO bankers appear to be taking a break this week after working at a blistering pace in August, which is traditionally a month when the IPO production line shuts down in the two weeks before Labor Day.
August 2020 goes down in the IPO history books as one of the busiest Augusts on record. A total of 47 IPOs were priced, including a slew of SPACs, also known as special-purpose acquisition companies. Underpinning this flow of deals was the rally in the U.S. stock market, with the S&P 500 hitting record highs again last week, as The Wall Street Journal noted..
The pace of IPO filings at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was like a stampede: A total of 27 companies filed plans to go public in the past week.
Palantir Technologies (PLTR proposed) created a stir last week with its public S-1 filing for an IPO via a direct listing. Some believe the offering will happen in September. Financial reporters had fun with one juicy detail: Palantir, founded in 2003, has never been profitable, its SEC filing showed. The company said in early July that it had filed confidential paperwork for its IPO with the SEC.
Chinese EV start-up XPeng (XPEV) pumped some electricity of its own into the IPO market last week. The company increased the size of its IPO by 50 percent, pricing 99.7 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) at $15 each, or $2 above its $11-to-$13 range. XPeng closed its first day of public trading at $21.22 and ended Friday’s session at $22.79, up 51.93 percent from its IPO price.
XPeng was the beneficiary of some warm IPO trade winds from the successful IPOs this summer of KE Holdings (BEKE), China’s online real estate platform, and a Chinese EV maker, Li Auto (LI). KE Holdings is up 148.75 percent from its IPO price, which has landed it on IPOScoop’s 2020 IPO All-Stars List.
Week of Sept. 7th
Nothing is on the IPO Calendar for the week of Sept. 7, which starts with the Labor Day holiday. The U.S. stock market will be closed for the holiday. Traditionally, the IPO market kicks back into gear after Labor Day. This year, expectations are high for an unusually busy fall for IPOs, based on the recent rush of SEC filings. It’s possible that some names could pop onto next week’s IPO Calendar when the SEC’s filing window opens again for business on Monday morning, Aug. 31st.
Stay tuned.
Disclaimer: A SCOOP Rating (Wall Street Consensus of Opening-day Premiums) is a general consensus taken, at press time, from Wall Street and investment professionals concerning how well an IPO might perform when it starts trading. The SCOOP Rating does not reflect the opinions of anyone associated with IPOScoop.com. The SCOOP ratings should not be taken as investment advice. The rating merely reflects the opinion of the professionals at the time of publication and is subject to last-minute changes due to market conditions, changes in a specific offering and other factors, such as changes in the proposed offering terms and the shifting of investor interest in the IPO. The information offered is taken from sources we believe to be reliable, but we cannot guarantee the accuracy.
Disclosure: Nobody on the IPOScoop.com staff has a position in any stocks mentioned above, nor do they trade or invest in IPOs. The IPOScoop.com staff does not issue advice, recommendations or opinions.