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’The LSE’s call to action
Sadly, the London Stock Exchange’s plan to fix the broken UK IPO market is unlikely to work for the simple reason that it doesn’t really believe there’s a problem.
For companies seeking to raise capital,
What goes up, must come down
SuperDroop has closed below its 500p IPO price target for the first time on Tuesday, as the market continues to digest the recent sell note from Numis Securities.
Your eyes do not deceive you, this purveyor of kanji-flaunting yoofwear really did trade at more than £18.00 a share.
The curse of the UK IPO strikes again
Barely six weeks after chief executive Jim French confirmed guidance and described forward tickets sales as encouraging, Flybe, the regional UK airline, has issued another profits warning.
Flybe’s press release:
IPO market still out for the summer
Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Renaissance Capital (in the usual place) do their best to add gloss to their third quarter overviews of the IPO market, but not enough to brighten a depressingly dark picture.
The Glencore lovefest
Meh!
The IPO research blackout on Glencore International has been lifted this Wednesday, which means the investment banks responsible for the UK’s latest IPO flop are now free to heap praise on the commodities trading house.
Is Betfair ex-growth?
There’s a distinct lack of ambition at Betfair.
The online betting exchange has on Wednesday announced plans to start a share buyback, barely nine months after listing:
Betfair Group plc (“Betfair”
Glencore, an overvalued Japanese throughput manager
“World’s biggest IPO”. “Unquantifably unique”. “No natural like-for-like”. “A trading house like no other”.
Whatever.
Analysts at MF Global are not buying the PR spin.
Glencore might be the emperor of the commodity world,
The UK flotation jinx
The curse strikes again!
At the close of play on Wednesday, Glencore International was trading almost 11 per cent below its IPO price of 530p.
Ouch.
And to think the stabilisation period is still running (to Friday in fact).
Dupe de Group(on) – some very special accounting
You gotta love new accounting principles — especially ones drummed up by IPO-ing tech firms.
From Groupon’s S-1 filing:
We measure our business with several financial metrics. The key metrics are gross profit,
Schwarzman: some of my best friends are old people
The front page splash in Thursday’s Daily Mail has certainly struck a nerve at private equity group Blackstone.
It’s just fired off the following statement:
A news report that appeared this morning on former Blackstone portfolio company Southern Cross was inaccurate and misleading.
Glencore debuts… [updated]
Up 3 per cent from the IPO price of 530p at pixel time and trading on a conditional basis — chart via Reuters:
Apparently they’re hoping for a 5-10 per cent rise on the first day…
Update — Aargh.
What’s going on in IPO land?
First it’s RenRen, then Dunkin’ Donuts and of course, the mother of them all, Glencore, to name a tiny handful of the highest-profile IPOs – planned or executed – making headlines on Thursday.
In the US alone,
Glencore’s Achilles’ heel
FT Alphaville has been poring over the Glencore prospectus overnight and we’ve come across a few further points of interest on the matter of funding.
As we noted earlier last month, Glencore’s marketing business is very much focused on tried and tested arbitrage strategies unconnected to the ‘flat-price’ of commodities,
Meet the $9.6bn man (and Glencore’s other billionaires)
It’s out, and longer than Tolstoy’s War & Peace.
Presenting the Glencore prospectus, which is so big we can’t upload it to our servers — but you can find the 134MB file on Scribd once it loads!
A quick glance at the document reveals that the 15.8 per cent stake of chief executive Ivan Glasenberg will be worth around $9.6bn at the mid points of the 480p to 580p range.
Here comes RenRen
UPDATE: As Reuters reported late on Tuesday, RenRen didn’t actually price until early Wednesday morning (at $14), but its American Depositary Shares started trading Wednesday on the NYSE as scheduled.
This was Renaissance Capital’s shadow US IPO backlog at the end of last year,
Glencore IPO term sheet
Related link:
Price Range and Publication of Prospectus – Glencore
Further further reading
For the commute home, where there is often such a thing as too much information, like the government warning on your favourite bottle of scotch,
- US IPO filings reach 2007 levels.
- When there’s no such thing as too much information.
The Glencore market-timing myth
There was a really interesting column penned by Matthew Lynn on Tuesday.
In a nutshell it argued that investors should be mindful of investing in a company known for its shrewdness when it comes to market-timing.
Glencore’s trading strategies disclosed!
Courtesy of Glencore’s intention to float filing on Thursday an insight (finally!) into the previously shy commodity powerhouse’s closely held trading strategies.
From the document:
Types of arbitrage strategies Many of the physical commodity markets in which Glencore operates are fragmented or periodically volatile.
Glencore prepares for take-off
After weeks of speculation (and spin) Glencore has finally published its Intention to Float document.
A lot of it is has already found its way into the public domain, but there are some additional nuggets like details of Glencore’s trading strategies (to follow in a separate post).
(Under) Perform Group takes the plunge
And the latest company to brave the treacherous waters of London’s IPO market gets off to a less than auspicious start.
The price action in Perform Group, the progressive sports media company, on Friday morning.
The unintended consequences of the nuclear scare
This is just the start of it, and one tiny aspect of the rapidly widening impact of Japan’s worsening nuclear crisis.
Not only did the failed attempts by Tepco, operator of Japan’s cripplied Fukushima nuclear power plants,
Webvan man unloads after hours
If you thought Alphaville wouldn’t be watching the RNS feed at 6.30pm on Friday night Mr Steiner, CEO of Ocado, you were sadly mistaken.
We were and spotted your sneaky sale of 2m shares.
From RNS:
SEC pokes – and friends – secondary markets
Facebook – as you well know – has friended Goldman Sachs and seemingly poked the SEC into investigative action.
Whilst FT Alphaville was tagging holiday photos from awkward family gatherings, Facebook received a Christmas present from Goldman Sachs and DST Global in the form of a $500m investment via a private,
A Christmas turkey
A late entry for worst UK flotation of the year… Madagascar Oil.
Just three weeks after its shares started trading on the junior Aim market at 95p, the exploration company has dropped this bombshell:
SuperTramp
Ouch.
Stock market darling SuperGroup has come back to earth with a bit of a bump on Wednesday morning:
The reason (aside from some understandable profit taking) is a warning in today’s half year results from the fast growing fashion retailer that rising raw material prices – ie cotton – may affect gross margins in the year to April 2011.
Betfair finds the going heavy
If you thought Betfair was a thoroughbred IPO think again.
After flying out of the traps the internet betting exchange is finding the going a bit heavy. On Monday, Betfair dipped below its October flotation price of £13,
Inside an FX IPO
FXCM, the US-based FX and securities broker, filed a prospectus to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday for an intended initial public offering later this month.
The terms show the company hoping to raise $211m by offering 15.1m Class A shares at a price range of $13-$15 — a mid-point of which would give the company a market value of $1.1 bn.
Another ‘successful’ IPO
Remember that ‘succesful’ Enel Green Energy float?
The one where the dozen or so bookrunners and joint bookrunners were forced to price the stock at the bottom end of a lowered range and with mainly retail investors?
(The IPO,