After two months of cricket chirps, there's life again in the IPO market.
Yesterday's debut of Zeltiq Aesthetics (Nasdaq: ZLTQ ) and last Friday's rollout of Ubiquiti Networks (Nasdaq: UBNT ) have put an end to a ridiculous dry spell of fresh meat on the stock exchanges.
You have to go all the way back to the mid-August debuts of cloud backup specialist Carbonite (Nasdaq: CARB ) and Chinese video-sharing website operator Tudou (Nasdaq: TUDO ) to find the last time that companies chanced the chilly IPO waters. Bearish markets and jaded investors have a funny way of thinning out underwriter pipelines.
Zeltiq is the company behind CoolSculpting, the FDA-approved nonsurgical weight-loss process that freezes fat cells. It's basically a noninvasive alternative to liposuction. Ubiquiti provides wireless networking solutions to carriers in underserved markets.
Both companies had to pay the price for going public at a time of investor apathy. Zeltiq was originally targeting to go public between $14 and $16. It had to settle for $13. Ubiquiti was dealt an even bigger haircut, going public at $15 on Friday after originally aiming to IPO between $20 and $22.
The lower starting lines are paying off. Zeltiq closed at $15.50 as yesterday's debutante, at the high end of its original pricing range. Ubiquiti inched higher in each of its first three trading days before slipping on Wednesday. It hit a new intraday high yesterday of $19.42, before closing at $17.65. It still has some catching up to do if it wants to get back to its original range, but at least its first wave of public investors at $15 are happy.
The market should continue to get exciting.
Groupon is set to finally begin its road show next week. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the humbled deal giant is now seeking a valuation of less than $12.5 billion, a far cry from its earlier swagger that had some speculating a market valuation of as much as $30 billion.
Sobered adjustments obviously aren't a bad thing. If that's what it takes to get deals done -- and if more new offerings follow Zeltiq and Ubiquiti in rewarding their IPO buyers -- underwriters may finally be ready to get busy again.
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