IPOs – why the frenzy ?
The 20-plus companies that are looking to go public this week hope to collectively raise about $6.7 billion dollars, with about half of it for General Electric’s consumer lending firm Synchrony Financial.
“That’s going to be a $3 billion IPO, the biggest we’ve seen since the May, 2012 IPO of Facebook,” says Kathleen Smith, a principal with the IPO fund manager Renaissance Capital. She labels Mobileye another one of this week’s “shiny objects.” The company makes the technology that tells you when your car might hit the one in front of you. “It has about a 50 percent share of that market, very high growth and very profitable, so all investors are looking at that.”
Smith cautions that this week’s batch of potential IPOs is a big one for the market to digest.
It’s also the right kind of market, says John E. Fitzgibbon, Jr. of IPOScoop.com.
“You’ve got to have the bull running down the street and you’ve got to have the wind at its back,” he says.
Fitzgibbon thinks this year might even be the biggest one for IPOs since the dot-com bubble, but he points out that a lot of the offerings are fetching discounted prices. This week’s IPO frenzy is an “End of Summer sale” that he predicts is just getting started.
“It’s like Macy’s department store; if it doesn’t sell, mark it down and drop it to the basement.”
Who are all these companies, anyway? We rounded up the most notable IPOs from this record-breaking week and grouped the companies up according to their business.
Consumer finance
Synchrony Financial‘s IPO is not only the biggest offering of the week by far, but at about $3 billion it’s poised to raise more than any IPO this year. Synchrony is GE’s consumer finance arm, facilitating store-brand credit cards and financing programs for big-name retailers like Amazon and Wal-Mart.
Medicine
Of the this week’s huge group of IPOs, more than half are for biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms. The biggest player is Catalent, a multi-armed drug development and delivery company that’s expected to offer 42.5 million shares at $19-$22 a share, according to Renaissance Capital. Catalent’s nearly $1 billion deal dwarfs about a dozen other companies focused on everything from gene therapy to medical imaging to epilepsy treatment.
Technology
Mobileye is certainly a “shiny object” this week as it looks to raise half a billion dollars. The Israeli firm is the leading supplier of sensors that detect a potential collision. Investors are keeping a special eye on the company amid rumors of a potential partnership with Tesla to build self-driving cars.
Mobile gaming
It’s no secret mobile gaming is big business, and developer IDreamSky has become a leader by adapting existing titles like “Fruit Ninja” and “Temple Run” for Chinese markets. That model has earned IDreamSky 100 million active users and $65 million in the year ending last March. They are looking to raise a little more than $100 million this week.
Energy
There are a handful of energy companies up for offering next week, but the largest is another big spin-off. Transocean Partners, LLC is a small portion of oil rig giant Transocean, which hopes to sell $350 million in shares. Spinning off Transocean Partner’s three rigs in the Gulf of Mexico will reportedly offer Transocean more financial flexibility, but the Wall Street Journal notes this practice can be a tax dodge.
Graphic by Shea Huffman/Marketplace
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