Posts Tagged ‘ ipo ’

Cambodian Stock Market Opens with Phnom Penh Water Surging on First Day

April 23, 2012
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Le Ballet Royal du Cambodge

 

Cambodia is a country with 14 million people nestled between Vietnam, Thailand and Laos. Cambodia’s history has been difficult with the brutal Khmer Rouge dictatorship through the 1970’s. It has been estimated that over 3 million Cambodians were killed. Cambodia has been quietly emerging and is now considered a frontier market for investing. The economy has been growing and gaining share of global manufacturing and corporations have been building a presence. On April 18th, the Cambodian stock market opened with Phnom Penh Water Supply (PWSA KH) surging 48% on the first day of trading. The company raised $21M from investors through its IPO. Frontier markets have the ability to decouple from global macro as there are a number of idiosyncratic changes taking place in markets like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia and Bangladesh. Worth keeping an eye on.

 

 

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Caesars (CZR) IPO at $9 – Company Returns to the Public Markets

February 8, 2012
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Caesars PalaceCaesars will launch their IPO under the ticker CZR. The company is offering 1,811,313 shares to the public priced at $9. Credit Suisse and Citigroup are the joint-book runners. Caesars operates under the Caesars, Harrah’s, and Horseshoe brand names. Caesars also owns the World Series of Poker and London Clubs. When the stock commences trading at $9 the market cap will be $1.1 billion and the enterprise value will be $22 billion as the company will still have a heavy debt load. Caesars valuation is down sharply from peak valuations in 2007. John Paulson has been one of the private investors.

Caesars comes public in a period of low interest costs where Vegas is starting to slowly recover. There is an old adage among Las Vegas gamblers: “don’t game where they don’t own the house”. It will be interesting to see if Caesars will maintain their levels of customer service in a period where expenses will be more scrutinized in the light of the public markets.

Casino Market Capitalizations:

Las Vegas Sands:              $42B
Wynn Resorts:                 $14B
MGM Resorts:                 $7B
Caesars:                         $1.1B

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Groupon Inc (GRPN) IPO Opens 50% Higher

November 4, 2011
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Groupon was able to push through its IPO despite a more risk-averse market environment and recent concerns about the quality of the accounting. The IPO price of $20 was 11% above targets which were recently revised lower. The company sold shares at a valuation of $12.7B and today, on the first day of trading, the shares opened around $30 up 50%. Shares have quickly pulled back to $27, which is still up 35%. The deal was led by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and CSFB. One important item of note is that Groupon only offered 4.7% of the outstanding shares to the public. Keeping the float extremely thin has been a strategy for recent technology IPOs in order to create scarcity value for the stock and a high valuation. Linked-In (LNKD) utilized the same strategy and saw the IPO price shoot from $45 to over $90 on the first-day. Linked-In is priced at $77 today. With such a low percentage of the shares trading a future risk will be additional issuance from the company which will provide insiders a chance to liquidate more of their holdings. Be careful extrapolating anything from today’s stock price for GRPN.

groupon

 

 

 

 

 

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Zuoan Fashion (ZA) – Shares Jump 25%

October 10, 2011
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I keep an eye on a lot of the Chinese ADRs in order to gauge market sentiment. The sector has been hammered (perhaps I need a stronger tool for my description) based on dual fears of corporate governance issues and a China hard landing.

While not invested in the space, I’ve pondered that the stocks can’t all be frauds. Listing via reverse merger transactions is certainly a major red flag but recently even the companies that went through actual IPOs and have real auditors have been demolished.

Zuoan Fashion (ZA) shares IPO’d at $7 last year and subsequently traded down to the $2s. The company operates high ROIC apparel concessions in Chinese department stores. Same store sales have been healthy and I take note today that the shares are up 25% today.

Last week, I highlighted budget hotel operator Home Inns (HMIN) when the shares sold off to $24. With the market rally they are trading at $28.50 today (+19% in seven trading days)

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