Over the past year, the IPO market has offered some pretty phenomenal returns to investors who allocated capital to newly public companies from abroad. Three of the top five IPOs are operating outside our borders, and all boast returns north of 140%.
Trina Solar (NYSE:TSL), a Chinese manufacturer of solar power products, is up 200%, and the stock of Ultrapetrol Bahamas (NASDAQ:ULTR), a marine transport company that operates in South America, has surged 145%. And Bill Mann has added the Chinese language education company, New Oriental Education (NYSE:EDU), to the Motley Fool Global Gains newsletter portfolio. While the company's shares have returned 45% since they were recommended in February, the stock has offered a 160% return since its initial public offering.
As you can see, investors have already profited from the initial run-ups on the IPOs listed above, so let's take a look at some foreign IPOs that are lined up to hit U.S. markets.
To InfiniBand and beyond
Our first stop is Israel, where communications equipment firm Voltaire is preparing to go public next week on the Nasdaq. Most recently, the company began focusing on a newfangled technology called InfiniBand, which allows for high-performance transfers of data and has proven to be effective with complex environments like data centers. To get its products to market, Voltaire has assembled original equipment manufacturer deals with biggies like IBM (NYSE:IBM), Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems.
InfiniBand is a step ahead of other general-purpose server technologies such as the Ethernet, but many major companies such as Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and IBM have expressed their vision of InfiniBand being used for general business computing someday. A recent study from researcher IDC says the market is expected to grow from $157 million in 2006 to $649 million in 2010. So while there is competition from QLogic (NASDAQ:QLGC), Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO), and several smaller companies, it seems there is significant momentum behind the InfiniBand market.
Voltaire plans to issue 7.6 million shares at $12 to $14 per share. The proposed ticker symbol is VOLT, and the IPO's primary underwriters are JPMorgan and Merrill Lynch.
In a perfect world
Another IPO to keep on your radar next week is from China-based Perfect World. The online developer and operator creates three-dimensional online games and boasts a 3-D game engine, game development platform, and real-time, anti-cheating expertise. Its own technology, called Angelica, allows for rapid development and has some unique visual effects. One unique feature is that the system simulates realistic free-style flying, which is no easy feat.
The company turned a profit for the latest quarter, earning $5.18 million (it reported a loss of $3.6 million for all of 2006). Also, IDC has estimated stellar growth for the Chinese online gaming market: In 2006, the market for online games in China was at $816 million, but it's predicted to grow to $3 billion by 2011.
The company plans to offer 11.8 million shares at $12 to $14 each, and the proposed ticker is PWRD. The lead underwriting managers include Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.
It's homework time
It's crucial that Foolish investors do some extra homework on companies about to go public, because IPOs, particularly international ones, can be risky plays. But as seen with the success of some of the top foreign IPOs issued so far this year, it's definitely worth the extra work to discover these potential multibaggers.
Some more Foolishness:
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Fool contributor Tom Taulli, author of The Complete M&A Handbook, does not own shares mentioned in this article. He is ranked 3,203 out of more than 60,000 investors in Motley Fool CAPS. Intel is an Inside Value recommendation, and JPMorgan is an Income Investor pick. The Fool has a disclosure policy.
