initial public offerings (IPOs) trading on American exchanges

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Twitter - profile

In December, Twitter reportedly raised $200 million, valuing the company at $3.7 billion. Investors included the marquee Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.


The valuation is more than triple the amount that investors paid in a funding round just a year earlier. Recent discussions have pegged the company's worth at up to $8 billion, making the stakes of Twitter co-founders Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams likely worth several hundred million dollars apiece.

That's not bad considering that Stone, in an onstage interview at a Federated Media conference in February, said of Twitter: "we're just in the early phases of being a real business."

The San Francisco-based company is not profitable and had 2010 revenue of $45 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Among other Twitter shareholders are several prominent tech investors including Ron Conway and Marc Andreesen and venture capital firms Union Square Ventures and Charles River Ventures.

Post Holdings (POST) - 2-week performance

Yelp (YELP) - profile

  • Google had previously been in talks to acquire Yelp in late 2009, but those discussions fell apart and Yelp walked away from some $500 million. 
  • Since then, the relationship between Google and Yelp has been tenuous, as Google borrowed liberally from Yelp’s database of reviews to flesh out its Google Places pages. Google has toned down the practice in the last few months, and is now clearly looking to boost the number of reviews it can call its own using features like Hotpot and through deals.



Yelp by the numbers

Friday, February 24, 2012

Bazaar Voice (BV) started trading on the NASDAQ

Proto Labs (PRLB) started trading on the NYSE


Proto Labs began trading on the NYSE today under the ticker symbol “PRLB.” The company's stock opened at $25 a share, up 56% from its initial public offering price of $16. Proto Labs is one of the first IPOs to price above its expected range since Guidewire Software’s (NYSE: GWRE) initial public offering in January.
Proto Labs CEO Brad Cleveland in the center of the trading crowd as Proto Labs stock opens on the New York Stock Exchange

Friday, February 17, 2012

Brightcove (BCOV) started trading on the NASDAQ




Brightcove Inc., (Brightcove) is a provider of cloud-based solutions for publishing and distributing professional digital media. The Company provides solutions to media, retail, technology and financial services companies, as well as governments, educational institutions and non-profit organizations. Its products include Brightcove Video Cloud and Zencoder Media Processing Service. Brightcove Video Cloud (Video Cloud), the Company’s flagship product, is an online video platform. As of December 31, 2012, the Company had 6,367 customers in over 60 countries. In August 2012, the Company acquired Zencoder Inc., It generates revenue by offering its products to customers on a subscription-based, software as a service (SaaS) model. During the year ended December 31, 2012 the Company’s customers have used Brightcove Video Cloud to deliver an average of approximately 699 million video streams per month. On February 27, 2013, the Company discontinued its App Cloud platform.

Address

4th Floor, 290 Congress Street
BOSTON, MA 02210
United States

Key stats and ratios

Q2 (Jun '13)2012
Net profit margin-13.09%-14.15%
Operating margin-12.27%-17.56%
EBITD margin--10.15%
Return on average assets-14.94%-17.25%
Return on average equity-23.80%-
Employees345

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Yelp seeks to raise up to $100 mln in IPO

Yelp Inc. said it seeks to raise as much as $100 million in its initial public offering, according to an amended filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Thursday. 

The local-business reviews site estimates it will offer 7.15 million shares at $12 to $14 each. The company has applied to the New York Stock Exchange to trade under the ticker "YELP."

Greenway Medical (GWAY) started trading on the NYSE on Feb 2, 2012

  • November 2013: Greenway Medical was acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $20.35 per share or approximately $644 million. It was combined it with Vista Equity Partners' Vitera and SuccessEHS, rebranding them as Greenway Health. The combined company is privately held and operates under the Greenway brand. Tee Green, Greenway’s CEO, maintains that position. Vitera’s CEO, Matthew J. Hawkins, serves as President. Both serve on Greenway’s board of directors.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Empire State Building owner plans $1 billion IPO

NEW YORK — The company that runs Manhattan’s Empire State Building is planning an initial public offering that could raise as much as $1 billion.

Empire State Realty Trust Inc. owns and operates 12 properties in Manhattan and the greater New York metropolitan area.

The company didn’t say in its regulatory filing Monday how many shares might be involved in the IPO or what price they might fetch. The $1 billion amount isn’t final, either. It’s subject to investor demand.

Empire State Realty said it plans to use the offering’s net proceeds to pay certain investors, repay loans, cover the expenses of the IPO and the company’s formation last summer, and for general purposes and possible future acquisitions.

Empire State Realty’s predecessor is Malkin Holdings LLC, which disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in November that it was considering the possibility of a publicly traded real estate investment company.

The company has been renovating its properties, and said that it needs $55 million to $65 million beyond 2013 to finish upgrades at the Empire State Building.

The Empire State Building, a 102-story tower completed in 1931, is famous for its rooftop view and for its role as the building that a giant ape scaled in the 1933 film “King Kong.”

Empire State Realty expects to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the “ESB” ticker symbol.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Groupon reports losing money despite revenue surge; stock plunges A/H

Groupon Inc. stock plunged almost 10 percent in after-market trading after the company reported it lost $42.7 million in its fourth quarter despite a sharp increase in revenue.

The Chicago-based online coupon company said that for the three months that ended Dec. 31, the net loss attributable to common stockholders was 8 cents per share compared with $1.08 a share for the previous fourth quarter.

Revenue grew to $506.5 million for the quarter, a 194 percent increase from the $172.2 million in sales it saw the previous fourth quarter.

** daily ** A/H

** weekly ** A/H

Groupon shares were trading at $22.14, down 9.9 percent, in after-hours trading, after ending the regular market day up 1.6 percent.

“Groupon had a strong fourth quarter and we finished 2011 having helped 250,000 local merchants across 47 countries grow their businesses while saving Groupon customers billions of dollars,” Andrew Mason, CEO and co-Founder of Groupon, said in a press release. “We will continue to invest in new services and tools that help our merchant partners be more successful and drive local commerce around the world.”

Caesars Entertainment (CZR) began trading on the NASDAQ on 8 February 2012

NEW YORK (AP) – Shares of casino operator Caesars Entertainment (CZR) jumped almost 100% Wednesday in its first day of trading on the Nasdaq.

The company's stock rose as much as $8.90, or almost 100%, to $17.90 in morning trading. Caesars (CZR) had priced its initial public offering of 1.8 million shares at $9 apiece late Tuesday.

The Las Vegas-based company said late Tuesday that it expected to raise about $16 million from the offering before deducting costs. The offering values Caesars at about $1.14 billion, because it includes just 1.4% of the company's outstanding stock.


In 2007, when Caesars was known as Harrah's, Apollo Management Group and Texas Pacific Group paid $17.1 billion and assumed $12.4 billion in debt to take the company private.

When it first filed to go public in October 2010 as Harrah's Entertainment, the company planned to raise as much as $575 million. It scaled that back to $530 million, then canceled the proposal entirely, blaming market conditions.

The company restarted its IPO plans in November as the IPO market heated up again with several attention-getting tech offerings. At that point, it expected to raise about $50 million.

Caesars has said it would end up with net proceeds of $13.1 million selling the 1.8 million shares for $9, after deducting bank fees and other expenses. It plans to use the funds for general purposes including development.

Most of Caesars' casinos are in the U.S. and the U.K., while casino revenue is growing fastest in the major Asian markets.

Ceres cuts estimated IPO price to $16-$17 a share


Ceres Inc. reduced the estimated price range of its initial public offering of 5 million shares to a range of $16 to $17 each.

Last month, the agricultural biotechnology company said it expected the IPO to price between $21 and $23 a share.

Volatile markets have made it difficult to pitch and price debuts of late. Despite healthy interest in technology companies, like the recent IPOs of Groupon Inc. (GRPN) and Zynga Inc. (ZNGA), investors remain selective about which new stocks they are willing to bet upon.

Ceres initially filed plans in May for an estimated IPO of $100 million to fund seed production and cover commercialization expenses, among other goals.

Ceres sells seeds to produce renewable biomass feedstocks. It markets and sells sweet sorghum seeds in Brazil and switchgrass and high biomass sorghum seeds in the U.S.

The company is in the early stages of commercialization and hasn't achieved profitability.

Ceres has applied to list on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol CERE.

website: http://www.ceres.net/

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Post Holdings (POST) began trading on the NYSE

Shares of Post Holdings, Inc. began trading “regular way” on the NYSE on February 6, 2012, under the ticker symbol “POST” after the culmination of the spinoff from Ralcorp Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: RAH)

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Playing Facebook with puts

Facebook announced Wednesday that it expects to sell $5 billion worth of stock on an as yet unidentified exchange. The timing of the IPO isn't yet known, and neither is the ultimate price. But that price is likely to be high enough to keep the total of shares offered relatively low.

Thus, the stock is expected to appear immediately on Wall Street's hard-to-borrow list, making it difficult to short and creating an options-trading opportunity.

The options action will start six days after Facebook starts trading, when industry rules will allow the initial listing of puts and calls on the shares.


after Facebook's stock begins trading, some investors will view it as overpriced and try to bet on its decline. With Facebook shares hard to short, they will instead buy Facebook puts, which would rise in value if the stock were to slide.

On the other hand, anyone who wants to effectively bet that Facebook's stock will climb can sell puts, rather than buy them. This probably is the safer course.

Says a senior trader at a major market-making firm: "There's going to be lovers. There's going to be haters. The haters won't be able to express their view because the float is so small. It's probably going to be a tough borrow."

Puts, of course, give their buyers the right to sell, or "put," shares at a certain price to whoever sold the puts to them. A put's value increases as the price of the associated stock falls.

If lots of investors suddenly want to buy Facebook puts, options dealers could be in trouble if they can't short the stock to hedge those sales. To discourage heavy put buying, the dealers are likely to effectively jack up the puts' implied volatility—the critical part of an option's price—which means that the puts would fetch a premium price and that the stock would have to move very sharply before it overtook the puts' implied volatility premium.

To set the implied volatility of a new stock, options dealers try to determine what existing issues it most resembles.

Dealers are likely to conclude that Facebook's stock is similar to tech stocks with relatively high volatility, like, say, a Zynga (ZNGA), a Google (GOOG) or a Salesforce.com (CRM).

Using options to trade an initial public offering, especially one that is as hyped as Facebook's, is not for the meek or the slow. And individuals must realize that they will be placing bets at the same time that extremely sophisticated options market-making firms and their computerized pricing models are trying to determine the real value of Facebook's stock.

But if you are willing to buy Facebook's shares, the bet to make is to sell puts.

If the shares continue to advance, and never fall below your put's strike price, the money received from the sale will be yours to keep. And should the stock slip below the put's strike price, congratulations! You've bought the stock at a discount to what you would have paid if you had purchased it when it debuted.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Facebook files IPO prospectus

The most eagerly awaited IPO of the decade has just filed its S-1 statement (link). Some observations:
  • Symbol: FB
  • Proposed maximum aggregate offering price: $5 Billion
  • 845 million monthly active users (MAU)
  • 483 million daily active users (DAU)
  • Users generated on average 2.7 billion Likes and Comments per day in Q4 2011. 
  • 100 billion friendships
  • 250 million photos uploaded per day
  • FB generated $3.7 billion in Revenue in 2011, up from $2 billion in 2010
  • FB generated $1 billion in net income in 2011, up from $606 billion in 2010, a 40% growth rate, compared to the 165% growth rate from 2009's $229MM.
  • EBIT margin peaked at 52.3% in 2010 ($1MM in EBIT on $2 billion in revenue), has since declined to 47.3% or $1.756Bn on $3.711Bn in Revenue
  • $3.9 billion in cash and marketable securities
  • Peaked model? - MAU additions peaked in 2010 when FB added 248MM to a total of 608MM; in 2011 it added 237MM to 845MM
  • Zynga (ZNGA) accounts for 12% of Facebook's revenue

Recent tech IPO performance