initial public offerings (IPOs) trading on American exchanges

Monday, June 29, 2020

IPOs this week : June 29 - July 2, 20 (wk 26)

IPOs expected to price
  • DoubleDown Interactive (NASDAQ:DDI) and Dun & Bradstreet (NYSE:DNB) on June 30, as well as 
  • Accolade (NASDAQ:ACCD) and Lemonade (NYSE:LMND) on July 1. 
IPO quiet period expirations
  • Warner Music Group (NASDAQ:WMG) and Pliant Therapeutics (NASDAQ:PLRX) on June 29, as well as 
  • ZoomInfo (NASDAQ:ZI), Applied Molecular (NASDAQ:AMTI) and Shift4 Payments (NYSE:FOUR) on June 30. 
All five of those stocks have rallied since their debut, from Warner Music's 22% gain to ZoomInfo's 142% pop.

IPO lockup expirations
  • Northstar Gold (OTCPK:NSGCF). 
Across the Pacific, IPO debuts for Kangji Medical ($404M), Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals ($360M) and Hygeia Healthcare ($286M) are on tap.

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Dun & Bradstreet (DNB) announces launch of 65.75 mln share IPO

Expected to price between $19-$21


  • The lead underwriters on the IPO are Goldman Sachs, BofA Securities, J.P. Morgan, and Barclays.
  • DNB has applied to list shares on the NYSE.
  • A subsidiary of Cannae (CNNE), a subsidiary of Black Knight (BKI), and a subsidiary of CC Capital Partners plan to invest $200.0 mln, $100.0 mln, and $100.0 mln, respectively, in a concurrent private placement of DNB's common stock that is contingent upon the consummation of the offering at a price per share equal to 98.5% of the initial public offering price.
  • DNB intends to use the proceeds that it receives from the offering and the concurrent private placement to redeem all of its outstanding Series A Preferred Stock, repay a portion of its 10.250% Senior Unsecured Notes outstanding due 2027 and for working capital and other general corporate purposes.

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Tocagen (TOCA) and Forte Biosciences merge; trade as Forte Biosciences (FBRX)

Tocagen Inc. (Nasdaq: TOCA), and Forte Biosciences, Inc., a privately held clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing a live biotherapeutic for the treatment of inflammatory skin diseases, announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Tocagen will merge with Forte in an all-stock transaction.

The merged company will focus on advancing Forte's clinical program in inflammatory skin diseases, including atopic dermatitis. The combined company operates under the name Forte Biosciences and trades on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the ticker symbol FBRX.

Paul Wagner, CEO

***
Tocagen was a struggling brain cancer biotech whose huge Phase III failure triggered mass layoffs at the company.

Forte Biosciences is a biotech tackling atopic dermatitis and other inflammatory skin diseases.

Three years years ago, Tocagen went public and raised $85 million on the promise of a two-part therapy for glioblastoma. Part 1 used a vector to attack cancer cells and deliver the gene for an enzyme and Part 2 was a prodrug that converts into an anti-cancer drug. It was an intriguing approach to a deadly indication that has evaded most previous attempts, but in September, in its biggest test, the two-part therapy showed all but no signs of working.

In fact, patients on the control arm lived a month longer on average than patients on the drug arm, 12.2 vs 11.1. That computed to a hazard ratio of 1.06 and a p-value of 0.62. The company’s stock dropped 81% on the announcement, and a month later they cut 65% of their workforce, leaving the San Diego-based biotech with just 30 employees.

Monday, June 15, 2020

IPOs this week : June 15 - 19, 20 (wk 24)

IPOs expected to price
  • Royalty Pharma (RPRX) is expected to price its IPO on June 16. 


IPO quiet period expirations
  • The analyst quiet periods expire on June 15 for SelectQuote (NYSE:SLQT), Windtree Therapeutics (OTCQB:WINT) and Inari Medical (NASDAQ:NARI).
IPO lockup expirations
  • Indonesia Energy (NYSEMKT:INDO) and Monopar (NASDAQ:MNPR) on June 18. Across the Pacific, JD.com's (NASDAQ:JD) secondary offering in Hong Kong will begin trading on June 18. The company is looking to raise as much as $2B.

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Vroom (VRM) began trading on the Nasdaq on Tue 9 June 2020

Vroom is a New York City-based used car retailer and e-commerce company that enables consumers to buy, sell and finance cars online.
  • Headquarters: New York, NY
  • CEO: Paul J. Hennessy (Jun 8, 2016–)
  • Founded: 2013
  • vroom.com
Vroom upsized offering by 2.5 mln shares and priced 21.25 mln share IPO at $22.00 per share, above the expected range of $18-20

Vroom said in its IPO filing that the coronavirus pandemic could move more car buyers online. However, the company did acknowledge that the covid-19 pandemic did hurt its e-commerce operations, with online sales falling 15% from March 11 to March 31.

Vroom's IPO follows that of Warner Music Group  (WMG), which began trading last Wednesday, and ZoomInfo Technologies  (ZI), which debuted last Thursday.

The market for initial public offerings has been heating up this month. Last week, the IPO market saw more than $7 billion raised globally, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Monday, June 8, 2020

IPOs this week : June 8 - 12, 20 (wk 23)


IPOs expected to price
  • Online car seller Vroom (VRM) is offering about 18.8M shares in an expected range of $17 to $19. The timing for the IPO is intriguing with the pandemic leading to more online shopping for cars, but sales and margins under pressure. How well the Vroom IPO is received by investors could be of interest to Carvana (NYSE:CVNA), Cars.com (NYSE:CARS), TrueCar (NASDAQ:TRUE), AutoNation (NYSE:AN) and even Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) as the concept of online car shopping heads more mainstream. Vroom is expected to have a market capitalization of around $1.92B if it prices at the higher end of the indicated range. 
  • Across the Pacific, Chinese gaming company NetEase (NASDAQ:NTES) is looking to raise $1.2B in a Hong Kong listing to fund strategies for international expansion. Shares are expected to start trading on June 11. 

The quiet period expires for ADC Therapeutics (NYSE:ADCT) on June 9 and IPO share lockups end on XP (NASDAQ:XP), Bill Holdings (NYSE:BILL), OneConnect Financial (NYSE:OCFT) and Sprout Social (NASDAQ:SPT) later in the week.

There are also secondary offering lockup expirations on Tilray (NASDAQ:TLRY) and BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) to keep an eye on.

Thursday, June 4, 2020

Warner Music Group (WMG) began trading on the Nasdaq on Wed 3 June 20

Warner Music Group was founded in 1929 and is headquartered in New York, New York. Warner Music Group Corp. is a subsidiary of AI Entertainment Holdings LLC.
  • Sector(s): Communication Services
  • Industry: Entertainment
  • Full Time Employees: 5,400
  • http://www.wmg.com
  • Largest shareholder: Leonard Blavatnik (see below)

Leonard Blavatnik (born in 1957) is a Ukrainian businessman, investor, and philanthropist. As of May 2020, Blavatnik was the 4th wealthiest man in the United Kingdom.
  • Blavatnik reaped phenomenal riches from the chaotic world of 1990s Russian cowboy capitalism, and who cashed in that wealth in favor of western investments and a place in British and American high society. 
  • Over two decades, he extracted more than $14bn from Russia’s natural resources industry, the biggest financial gain of any individual foreign investor in the country and the bedrock of his approximate $25bn net wealth today.
  • Blavatnik succeeded in Russia while staying out of the spotlight. His activities in the west have been more conspicuous. His purchase of Warner Music for $3.3bn in 2011 was the first step in what he said was a mission to build a global media empire.
Len Blavatnik with his wife Emily Appelson, at an event in New York in October 2016 marking his donation to Carnegie Hall.

  • Blavatnik donated £75m to Oxford university in 2010 to set up the Blavatnik School of Government.
  • Blavatnik was named Sir Leonard and knighted by the Queen for his philanthropic work just seven years after obtaining British citizenship.
  • In 2017, a professor at Blavatnik’s Oxford school resigned after it emerged that Blavatnik’s company had donated $1m to Trump’s inauguration committee. 

Blavatnik shakes Donald Trump’s hand at an exclusive pre-inauguration event in January 2017.

Monday, June 1, 2020

IPOs this week : June 1 - 5, 20 (wk 22)

IPOs expected to price
  • Warner Music Group (WMG) set to price its offering on June 2. The former Warner Bros. property set a range of $23 to $26 for 70M Class A shares, with an implied valuation of $13.3B at the top end. Warner's stable of musicians includes Ed Sheeran and Bruno Mars. 
  • Pliant Therapeutics (PLRX) coming to the market with 6M shares in an expected range of $14 to $16. 
IPO quiet period expirations
  • GAN (NASDAQ:GAN) on June 1
  • Ayala Pharma (NASDAQ:AYLA) on June 2
IPO lockup expirations
  • LMP Automotive (NASDAQ:LMPX) on June 2.