With three new deals added to the IPO calendar as of Tuesday morning, the US IPO market is showing further signs of opening up, setting the stage for what could be the most active pricing period for IPOs since the end of 2007, when 10 deals went public in a single week. The newly added IPOs for next week are: Foursquare Capital (FSQR; $500 million deal size), a newly formed mortgage REIT backed by US asset manager AllianceBernstein (NYSE: AB); and Shanda Games Limited (GAME: $725 million), a carveout of the majority business of leading online Chinese game developer and operator Shanda Interactive (NASDAQ: SNDA).
There are now 10 IPOs scheduled to price over the next two weeks, eight of which are slated for the week of Sep. 21. The third new IPO to be added is Talecris Biotherapeutics (TLCR; $850 million deal size), one of the world's largest manufacturers of plasma-derived protein therapies for treating chronic and acute diseases; the deal was put on the calendar on Tuesday morning with a pricing date set for Sep. 30.
After coming to a complete standstill in mid 2008 and continuing through the first quarter of 2009, the IPO market has shown small pockets of activity since April 2009 but has yet to return to historical norms. However, this pronounced resurgence in the upcoming IPO calendar is a very encouraging sign and demonstrates increased confidence on the part of underwriters and investors alike. We have already seen an uptick in IPO filings over the last few months (there were 33 new IPO filings since July 1, up from 14 during 1H09), and we expect this trend to continue to build momentum over the coming months.
With the latest IPO filing coming on Monday evening (KAR Holdings, a private equity backed provider of auction services for used and salvage vehicles), September 2009 is the first month to show a year-over-year increase in new IPO filings in 20 months (January 2008). Month to date, eight new companies have already entered the US IPO pipeline, up from seven for the entire month of September 2008. The latest uptick in IPO filing activity marked the end of the longest stretch of declining monthly new IPO filings since the tech bubble burst, when US IPO filings declined for 22 consecutive months from May 2000 to Feb 2002.
