Brave are the souls who don't let rough waves or icy temperatures get in the way of diving into the ocean.
ReachLocal
ReachLocal, an online marketer with a localized bent, came to market priced at $13. It closed 15% higher at $14.98.
Accretive Health, a provider of revenue-cycle management services for the health-care industry, hit the market at $12 a share. It wrapped up its first trading day with a 13% gain at $13.55.
Those are some heady gains, especially on a day that saw the major market averages get smacked down by 4%.
The downside is that both companies had to hack away at their original IPO prices before underwriters could line up the willing buyers. ReachLocal was initially targeting its 4.2 million shares to roll out between $17 and $19 apiece. Accretive Health's original plan was to go public between $14 and $16. So even with yesterday's attractive pops, both stocks closed well short of even the low ends of their original pricing ranges.
The good news for private companies waiting for their chance to go public is that investors will remember the first-day gains and forget about haircuts that happened behind the scenes.
Strong debuts whet investor appetites for new issues, and the fact that ReachLocal and Accretive Health padded their gains as the rest of the market sold off will make future IPOs that much more attractive.
They can't do it alone, though. It's not helping that just one of the seven companies that went public last week, mobile-GPS specialist TeleNav
There have been a few winners this year. Primerica
These are the success stories that will woo both promising companies and IPO-buying investors to the market. This is a pipeline that hopefully won't run dry.
Which private company would you like to see go public this year? Tell us all about it in the comments box below.
