Tag Archives: IPO

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Fixed Income, People Profiles, Tech Talk

TradeWeb Cashes In, Broker-Dealer Investors Cash Out via IPO

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Bonds and Billions 3.0…Tradeweb Markets, one of the original electronic bond trading pioneers, which first introduced its dealer consortium platform in 1996, proved that patience is a virtue when it comes to monetizing enterprise value. The company raised $1.1billion via its Nasdaq-listed IPO yesterday (NASDAQ:NW). Illustrating investor attraction to owning a piece of the fintech company focused on fixed income trading, the company increased the number of shares they first planned to offer from 27.3 million to 40 million shares and upped the ante for the IPO price from a $24-$26 range to slightly north of $27. The IPO puts a $6bil valuation on the company–whose original investors include a consortium of broker-dealers.

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Tradeweb CEO Lee Olesky photo courtesy of BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS

Per snippet from Bloomberg News, Tradeweb intends to use proceeds to buy shares held by eight of the 11 large banks that own stakes in the company, including Bank of America Corp., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and UBS Group AG, according to its registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Tradeweb’s IPO is also the biggest for a financial services company in the U.S. since online lender GreenSky Inc. raised $874 million in May.

The offering follows benefits administrator Alight Inc.’s decision in March to postpone plans to raise up to $800 million in an IPO. Alight and Tradeweb are both owned by private equity firm Blackstone Group LP, which led the $17 billion acquisition last year of Tradeweb parent Refinitiv from Thomson Reuters Corp. Tradeweb, founded in 1996, builds and runs electronics markets for trading government bonds, derivatives, exchange-traded funds and other financial instruments over the counter. It handled an average of $549 billion in daily trades in 2018, according to its IPO prospectus.

Tradeweb posted net income of $160 million on $684 million in revenue last year.

As noted by Liz Hoffman of the WSJ, online venues are gaining ground in bond trading, digitizing orders that were once placed over the phone. At MarketAxess Holdings Inc., Tradeweb’s closest listed peer, trading volumes have more than doubled since 2014.

At $27, Tradeweb’s stock will list at about 30 times the company’s annual earnings. MarketAxess trades at nearly 50 times its earnings, while exchanges such as NYSE ownerIntercontinental Exchange Inc. fetch about 25 times their earnings.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley led the offering. Tradeweb will start trading Thursday under the symbol TW on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, according to the statement

Affiliates of Refinitiv will continue to hold about 54 percent of Tradeweb’s outstanding common stock, according to filings.

If you’ve got a hot insider tip, a bright idea, or if you’d like to get visibility for your brand through MarketsMuse via subliminal content marketing, advertorial, blatant shout-out, spotlight article, news release etc., please reach out to our Senior Editor via cmo@marketsmuse.com

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People Profiles, Tech Talk

Former NYSE Prez Farley Launches Fintech SPAC IPO

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Tom Farley, the former top gun at the NYSE, has long advocated the benefits of raising capital via the construct of Special Purpose Acquisition Company aka “SPAC”, aka “Blank Check company.” Now he’s become the CEO poster boy for SPACs with the formal IPO and NYSE listing of Fintech SPAC Far Point Acquisition Corp., a financial technology-themed acquisition company, which is backed by activist investor and fintech aficiondo Dan Loeb.

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Tom Farley, Far Point Acquisition Corp

42-yearold Farley, a Georgetown University alum and former ICE senior executive and the second youngest person to serve as NYSE President when taking on that role in 2012, will serve as CEO of the ‘fintech buyout’ company. Farley is arguably one of the industry’s most fintech-fluent folks, given his role in helping to transform NYSE into a financial industry trading technology centerpiece.

Farley’s long-held view towards the future is evidenced by the fact  NYSE’s two most dominant designated market-makers aka “DMM” firms, GTS Securities and Virtu Financial are companies that are synonymous with the phrase fintech. Both firms started their journeys as prop trading firms specializing in ‘high-frequency-trading’ and their more recently attained NYSE ‘specialist’ roles are powered by next generation in-house algorithmic trading and artificial intelligence tool kits. GTS Founder Ari Rubenstein, whose NYSE DMM is responsible for maintaining fair and orderly markets in 1200+ companies and who also oversees one of the industry’s most robust, multi-asset liquidity-providing prop trading platforms, is also a founding member of industry trade group Modern Markets Initiative (MMI) 

Back to SPACs- For those who may have missed the multiple memos coming out of the biggest investment banks, the blank check company construct provides a means to create a publicly-traded ‘shell company’, whose use of proceeds is intended to acquire a private company (or companies) and seamlessly “jump the shark” by rolling the private company into the publicly-listed company without bearing the burden of the time and cost that is synonymous with taking a company public via the traditional IPO process.

First introduced in the early 1970’s, blank check companies were soon derided by securities regulators after a string of capital raises by companies that had notoriously little corporate governance, enabled unsupervised CEOs to empty corporate coffers for personal gain, leaving investors with nothing. In the early 1990’s, the construct was re-invented by small-cap investment bank GKN Securities’ founders David Nussbaum, Roger Gladstone and Robert Gladstone, who have been credited with introducing the SPAC construct (along with securing a trademark for SPAC), which is chock full of checks and balances. The GKN leadership team’s early success in floating ‘blank check’ companies led to their creating a new firm, EarlyBirdCapital which has become the thought-leader in SPAC offerings, as the SPAC template has since been emulated by the financial industry’s leading investment banks and endorsed by major exchanges across the globe.

In the past 10 years alone, tens of dozens of capital raises via the SPAC construct have delivered billions of dollars of dry powder for designated acquisition companies that have since effected tens of billions of dollars worth of ‘quick IPOs’ for companies in nearly every industry sector, including the cannabis industry,

One fintech industry veteran and startup industry consultant who coincidentally helped GKN introduce their first SPACs to institutional investors back in 1993, and now serves on the advisory board of fintech merchant bank SenaHill Partners said, “Far Point Acquisition may not be the first Fintech SPAC, but its launch clearly reinforces a compelling approach to raising capital for the purpose of bringing established private companies into the publicly-traded ecosystem.”

Via video clip below, former NYSE top gun Tom Farley expresses his views on the SPAC construct and the fintech sector, and provides a glimpse at the prospective target acquisitions that Farley will be aiming for.

If you’ve got a hot insider tip, a bright idea, or if you’d like to get visibility for your brand through MarketsMuse via subliminal content marketing, advertorial, blatant shout-out, spotlight article, news release etc., please reach out to our Senior Editor via cmo@marketsmuse.com.

Former NYSE president announces IPO for ‘blank check company’ from CNBC.

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ETF News, Global Macro Strategy

Nasdaq Bets on Blank-Check Co. IPOs To Boost Listings; SPACs are Sizzling

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Competition for listings is a contact sport in the world of major stock exchanges as evidenced by the assortment of US bourses vying to increase market share in exchange-traded fund (ETFs), which represent nearly 2000 securities or more than half of all equities listed on major US stock exchanges.  While the NYSE has long been the place-to-list for issuers of ETFs, Nasdaq has proven to have sharp elbows in not only soliciting ETF issuers (with BATS taking a distant third), Nasdaq now has another card up its sleeve-the exchange operator is aiming at another listing product known as blank-check companies and is aggressively biting at the heels of Intercontinental Exchange Inc.’s NYSE, which has carved out a niche in the listing of these companies, more formally known as Special Purpose Acquisition Companies aka SPACs ™. In an effort to grab market share in this product away from NYSE and boost IPO listings (and hence more fees from Issuers and more revenue from distributing market data) Nasdaq recently filed proposed new rule changes with the SEC that will make it easier for SPACs ™ to list on that platform.

According to reporting by Alexander Osipovich of the WSJ, 22 blank-check companies have floated IPOs so far this year, raising nearly $7bil.

Special Purpose Acquisition Vehicles are shell companies that raise funds via a public offering whereby the proceeds are managed by a pre-selected team of industry-specific executives who receive an equity stake in the shell and are charged with acquiring an existing private company or in some cases, several private companies and roll those companies into the existing publicly-traded entity. In the event an acquisition cannot be identified and approved by an overwhelming majority of the shareholders within [typically] 24 months of the IPO, 95% of the funds raised are returned to the shareholders.

The investment vehicle construct was first created in the 1970’s, but soon fell out favor after regulators uncovered widespread abuse by operators of  blank check company managers, which led to multiple cases of securities fraud charges against many different firms.  The blank check model was later refined in the early 1990’s by GKN Securities, whose principals created a much tighter construct and trademarked the SPAC™ acronym. GKN successor firm boutique investment bank Early Bird Capital since carried the torch of its predecessor; during the past ten years, Early Bird has underwritten and/or co-managed nearly 75 SPAC™ IPOs that have raised over $4bil.

Early Bird’s early success has not gone unnoticed by leading Wall Street firms; 6-pack investment banks Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Deutsche Bank among others have crowded into the space that Early Bird Capital forged. In 2017 alone, SPACs™ have raised nearly $4bil for an assortment of acquisition-minded firms.

According to Paul Azous, CEO of Prospectus.com, a consultancy that assists companies throughout the course of preparing investor offering documentation and via a captive network of securities attorneys, the firm also advises companies seeking to list on stock exchanges, “The blank-check concept is in vogue once again, and we’re working with at least two clients who have targeted specific industries that are seemingly ripe for roll-up.” Added Azous, “With Nasdaq easing the listing burdens, strategy of creating a public shell that can with reasonable ease, roll a private company into that publicly-listed entity should provide a good shot-in-the-arm to IPO activity, which has experienced fits and starts in each of the last several years.”

If you’ve got a hot insider tip, a bright idea, or if you’d like to get visibility for your brand through MarketsMuse via subliminal content marketing, advertorial, blatant shout-out, spotlight article, news release etc., please reach out to our Senior Editor via cmo@marketsmuse.com.

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ETF News, Tech Talk

BATS Takes 2nd Stab at IPO

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The second time is hoping to be a charm for exchange operator BATS Global Markets as it announced a 2nd stab at an IPO, which will be led by Morgan Stanley and Citi and enable an exit for investors that include BAML and Knight Capital.

Bats Global Markets announced the launch of its initial public offering Monday, with a price per share expected to be between $17 and $19. The offering, which could value the company as high as $1.8 billion, comes as the U.S. IPO market has seen its slowest start in seven years.

The IPO has been widely anticipated in part because market observers have been looking for activity in this year’s slow IPO market. Just nine companies launched IPOs in the U.S. in the first quarter of the year, the lowest number in a quarter since 2009, according to data from Dealogic.

The valuation is more than double the size of Bats Global Markets’ attempted IPO in 2012. That effort, which was halted due to a technical glitch shortly after shares started trading, valued the company at around $760 million, according to Bloomberg.

The company has grown significantly since its last IPO attempt. In January 2014 it acquired Direct Edge Holdings LLC, including the two exchanges EDGX and EDGA. In March of last year it acquired Hotspot FX Holdings, the operator or an electronic FX trading platform. Then last September, Bats expanded its Hotspot acquisition by launching a Bats Hotspot platform in London. Last November the company launched the EDGX Options trading platform. It has also significantly grown its exchange traded product (ETP) trading in the past few years.

In its prospectus the company said it is the second largest exchange operator in the U.S. by market share (after the New York Stock Exchange) with a 21.1 share of the overall U.S. equity market as of Dec. 31, 2015. It is also the largest exchange operator of exchange traded funds (ETFs) and other ETPs by market share with a 22.4 percent share of ETP trading last year. The company also had a 9.6 percent share of the U.S. equity options market last year. In Europe, its Bats Europe was the largest European exchange operator as measured by notional value traded as of Dec. 31 of last year.

The prospectus listed several potential growth strategies for the company, including increasing penetration in U.S. options with new products and services, expanding its global FX platform into other currency instruments, and building strength in U.S. equities by leveraging its position in ETPs to expand listings. The company also said it aims to fully monetize the value of its market data and connectivity.

ETF News

What’s Next: ETFs For Crowdfunding Industry?

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This post was written by Pete Hoegler, Washington DC-based Social Media Savant for The JLC Group. 

Three years after the JOBS Act was passed, it seems that Washington is back for more–a curtain call if you will–making it easier for small ventures to raise capital.

The House Financial Services Committee in early June floated a draft bill that would allow the creation of “venture exchanges” tailored to the needs of small companies looking to raise money. In many ways, the success of the JOBS Act hinges upon the creation of such markets. A healthy secondary market created liquidity that is critical to building investor confidence and creating a robust alternative to the global markets that today are dominated by enormous corporations.

The new proposed “venture exchange” laws are aimed at increasing access to early stage investors in private startups and small businesses (some of which could be JOBS Act enabled investors), as a lack of liquidity was a concern voiced by some surrounding the new laws for equity crowdfunding with non-accredited investors.

Investors in technology startups, for example, are likely to have to hold their position in any one investment for an average of 7 years. Creating opportunities for selling private stock in a start-up investment sooner through venture exchanges has the potential to reduce some of the early stage investment risks.

Where or How is there a link between Crowdfunding and Exchange-Traded Funds? Well, those following the creative finance wizards from the world of exchange-traded products can speculate the next  innovation will be ETFs comprised of non-public companies that were funded via crowdfunding platforms..and those companies will be labeled “pre-emerging start-ups” and there will be ETFs for each category of ‘project.’

While the underlying components might not necessarily be easily-traded by the universe of market-makers who profit by arbitraging the cash index vs. the underlying constituents, the advent of ETMFs, a structure that Eaton Vance hopes to bring to market and is based on a “non-transparent” construct (meaning the investor has no idea what the underlying constituents are), Crowdfunding ETFs could create markets that allow early investors who invested via equity crowdfunding to hedge their bets far before any kind of liquidity event like a public offering (IPO) might take place, spelling an opportunity for liquidity for those early investors.  Just like the current ETF landscape, these crowd-funding indexes would be themed according to industry sector and/or product categories.

OK, some of the wonks who are reading that last tongue-in-cheek idea might be rolling their eyes. That said, given the creative juices that flow from the capital markets, we’re willing to bet that at least one of the current innovators in the ETF world grabs on to this idea and such products will be introduced within the next 18-24 months. Oh, it was our idea…

The number of IPOs has gone from an average of 311 from 1980-2000 down to an average of 99 IPOs each year from 2001-2011 so opening up other alternatives for liquidity will de-risk the growing number of startup investments happening online.

This is yet another step towards reforming our capital markets. The first step was to enable access, and was addressed by Titles II, III & IV of the JOBS Act. So regardless of your opinion on this matter, the summer is shaping up to be an interesting time for equity crowdfunding investors, accredited and non-accredited alike.

ETF News

Twitter’s Weak Q1 Jolts Social ETFs

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MarketsMuse blog update profiles the disappointing Q1 for Twitter and the impact it is having on social media ETFs such as Renaissance IPO ETF (IPO), Global X Social Media Index ETF(SOCL) and ARK Web x.0 ETF (ARKW). This MarketsMuse update is courtesy of Zacks Equity Research and their article, “Twitter Tweets a Weak Q1 & Soft View, ETFs in Focus“, with an excerpt below. 

On April 28, Twitter (TWTR) came up with a weak Q1 and a disappointing guidance. The social networking site then saw a freefall in its share price as it failed to live up to many investors’ expectations.


Q1 in Detail

The company’s first-quarter 2015 non-GAAP loss per share (including the stock-based compensation expense) of 20 cents was a penny ahead of the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Excluding the stock-based compensation expense, the company earned 7 cents per share on a pro forma basis.

Revenues of $436 million in the quarter fell shy of the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $455 million. ‘A lower-than-expected contribution from newer direct response marketing products’ was held responsible for lower-than-expected revenues. However, revenues grew about 74% year over year.

Market Impact

This subdued performance dampened investors’ mood as the stock was severely beaten down in recent trading sessions. Following the earnings leak on April 28, about 40 minutes ahead of the closing bell, Twitter shares saw a landslide, plunging over 18% for the key trading session of April 28 on about fourth times the regular volume.

Shares slid about 8.9% on April 29. However, after such a massive sell-off for consecutive two days, Twitter stock recouped 0.94% after hours. Year to date, the stock is still up 8.3%.

Twitter does not have a sizable exposure in the overall ETF world with only three ETFs – Renaissance IPO ETF (IPO), Global X Social Media Index ETF(SOCL) and ARK Web x.0 ETF ((ARKW – ETF report)) – having major exposure of 8.17%, 3.66% and 3.20% respectively, at present. Such a huge fall in one of the major components should impact these ETFs.  Below, we have discussed these three funds in detail:

To continue reading about Twitter’s disappoint Q1’s impact on ETFs, click here

ETF News

Want GoPro? Go to These ETFs..

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marketwatchCourtesy of Benzinga via MarketWatch

The hotly-anticipated initial public offering of GoPro GPRO +8.52% this week is one of the largest consumer electronics debuts of the decade.

Shares surged more than 30 percent on Thursday from its IPO opening price of $24 per share, as the company raised $427 million in cash.

The initial success of GoPro may soon pave the way for entry into a number of exchange-traded funds in the near future as well.

The most likely ETF to get the first shot at adding this high definition video maker is the Renaissance IPO ETF IPO +0.09% . This fund allows new publicly-traded companies to be added to its index on the fifth day of trading, and subsequently removes any stocks that have more than two years of history.  Continue reading →

ETF News

ETF $IPO-Knight Flames Irrational Exuberance With Irrational Pricing

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indexuniverseBelow excerpt courtesy of Oct 24 IndexUniverse column re: The Renaissance IPO ETF, the newest entrance to the ETF market place, and tracks a market-cap-weighted index of recent US-listed IPOs. The fund acquires issues within 90 days or sooner after IPO and sells after 2 years.

“..The reason it (IPO) traded to a premium, most likely, is that the sole AP for the fund, Knight Capital [aka KCG] was caught off guard. The underlying stocks are plenty liquid, so there’s no reason to think Knight couldn’t make more shares, and obviously, with $31 million now in the fund, Knight indeed made more shares in a hurry. So the premium present in that first day’s trading was entirely irrational, and predictably collapsed.  To anyone who bought at that irrational price, all I can offer is my condolences. And perhaps a reminder that, in the end, fair value always wins. ..” Dave Nadig, IndexUniverse

Since the 2009 inception of the index IPO tracks—the Renaissance IPO Index—it’s returned an average annual return of 19.09 percent, just a touch over the Russell 3000’s return of 18.97 percent. Add in the effect of a 60 basis point management fee and it’s easy to be skeptical about whether the long-term returns will really play out for investors.

But that cautionary note seemed to be lost on the markets when IPO launched. In the first day of trading, IPO traded more than 800,000 shares. That’s a big day for a new niche ETF.

Unfortunately, the folks who were trading during that initial feeding frenzy caused an irrational “IPO pop” of their own.

For the entire article from IndexUniverse, please click here.

 

ETF News

New ETF of IPOs Is Better Than It Sounds: $IPO

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barrons  Courtesy of Brendan Conway

A new exchange-traded fund that invests in newly public companies isn’t as speculative at it seems at first glance.

Almost every day, I get word of a shiny new exchange-traded fund for some ephemeral trend or market sliver. So when news of an ETF of initial public offerings crossed my desk—just in time for Twitter’s hotly anticipated IPO next month—I expected more of the same. But the fund turns out to be different from, and an improvement on, the clubby and nontransparent IPO market. Don’t hop on the bandwagon, but for the right sort of risk-taking investor, there could be an untapped opportunity.

It turns out the surest way of investing effectively in newly public companies—as opposed to speculating on a first-day pop in a stock—is making sure the company will still be selling goods and services a few years from now. University of Florida economist Jay Ritter found three decades of outperformance (1980-2011) in IPO stocks with the biggest sales revenues before they go public. If a company sells a lot of products, it’s certainly less likely to be a Pets.com-type disaster. While this may sound obvious, it’s tough to put into practice. Small, newly public companies are tough to research and inherently risky investing propositions. They’re also not represented in the major stock indexes. Continue reading →

ETF News

#IPO Expert Renaissance Capital Launches ETF For…IPOs..

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  Courtesy of Tom Lydon

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Renaissance Capital, the Connecticut-based investment behind the Global IPO Plus Aftermarket Fund (IPOSX) mutual fund, will introduce the Renaissance IPO ETF (NYSEArca: IPO) on Wednesday.

The new ETF will be benchmarked to an in-house index, the Renaissance IPO Index, which is designed in conjunction with index provider FTSE.  “The FTSE Renaissance Global IPO Index Series provides total global IPO market coverage and is composed of regional (e.g. Asia Pacific), country-level (e.g. US) and strategic subsets (e.g. ex-US, Emerging Markets, capped and investable versions),” according to the Renaissance web site. 

IPO will compete directly with the First Trust US IPO Index Fund (NYSEArca: FPX), which is seven and a half years old and has $184.7 million in assets under management.  FPX has had another banner year, gaining 31.4%, but there are key differences between it and FPX.

Investors should note how FPX does business because in the case of this ETF, IPO does not necessarily mean brand new stocks. Said another way, a hot IPO set to debut on October 20 could trade for months before being included in FPX’s index. Additionally, FPX is home to plenty of spin-offs and companies that were taken private in private equity buyouts only to go public again a few years later. [Another Market Beating Niche ETF]

For the full story from ETF Trends, please click here

Strike Price

What’s Next?..Options Trading On Facebook (FB)

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Options on Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) will be available as early as May 29th. With volatile price action in FB after its IPO, traders will look to options strategies to profit

In the next several months FB is going to face pressure to grow into its current 100 Billion dollar valuation. As a growth stock trading over 100 times earnings, any sign of slower growth in Facebook will cause the stock to plummet quickly.Traders who do not think Facebook can hold its current valuation have a number of options strategies to profit from any fast downside price action.

Depending on implied volatilities of FB options, traders can be either short or long volatility. It is unlikely that FB stock will increase or decrease in value by more than 30% in one year. If options are trading will implied volatilities greater than 30%, traders should be net sellers of options. Selling vertical call spreads, which involves selling call options at strike prices above the current price and buying a call option at strike prices even farther out from the current price. This strategy will be profitable if FB maintains its price or decreases.

Notes WallachBeth Capital’s Randy Sharringhausen, an institutional options market expert, “Even if the company’s fundamentals don’t come close to justifying its IPO price, this is a company that has 450 million customers that visit every day and a corporate treasury flush with enough currency to finance any number of  major acquisition to better monetize its customers.  This should prove to be an interesting name to trade by the hedge fund and risk arb community, as well as the long/short managers.”

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