After a month-long holiday lull, the IPO pipeline began gushing again two weeks ago. Despite many prolific new offerings that crashed in 2012, the market's resilient returns and the investing appetite for new things will keep the debutantes flowing through 2013.
Not many companies have successfully introduced their offerings, so let's take a look at the rookie class so far.
|
IPO |
1/25/13 |
Gain | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Bright Horizons (BFAM 0.70%) |
$22 |
$28.32 |
29% |
|
LipoScience (NASDAQ: LPDX) |
$9 |
$10.45 |
16% |
|
CyrusOne (CONE) |
$19 |
$21.86 |
15% |
|
Norwegian Cruise Line (NCLH 0.66%) |
$19 |
$27.35 |
44% |
|
SunCoke Energy |
$19 |
$19.19 |
1% |
|
CVR Refining |
$25 |
$25.70 |
3% |
|
USA Compression (USAC 0.63%) |
$18 |
$17.80 |
(1%) |
Source: The Wall Street Journal.
If you see plenty more IPOs hit the market in the coming weeks, the table on top will explain why this is happening. All but one of this month's seven IPOs is trading below its underwriter offering price.
The lone sinker is intriguing. USA Compression is a master limited partnership structured around the compression of natural gas. The Wall Street Journal earlier this month pointed out that USA Compression was the first limited partnership to fall on its first day of trading in more than a year. The high distributions of MLPs and the healthy interest in natural gas should have helped the offering, but they didn't.
The other stocks have held up far better, but let's take a closer look at the four companies that have come through with double-digit percentage returns.
Bright Horizons is a leading day-care services provider. Bain Capital is a majority investor of the debt-saddled company, but don't let the kids hear that. Bright Horizons began trading on Friday.
LipoScience also went public on Friday. Bright Horizons and LipoScience were the only two companies to complete their new offerings last week. LipoScience's proprietary NMR LipoProfile test measures the number of low-density lipoprotein particles in a blood sample. The diagnostic test for gauging heart disease risk has been ordered 8 million times.
CyrusOne operates two dozen data centers worldwide. Among its 500 customers are 100 of the Fortune 1000 companies. It went public at $19 two weeks ago.
Norwegian Cruise Line -- or NCL -- is probably the most familiar name on the list of 2013 debutantes. The cruise line has been trying to go public for more than two years, and now joins its two cruising rivals as publicly traded entities. Cruise ships offer interesting plays on global tourism along with the tax-friendly benefits of generating a lot of their revenue on the high seas.
