Investing

Which IPO Was Really Better: Shopify or Fitbit?

Initial public offerings (IPOs) always have been somewhat hard for most public investors to call ahead of time. They are even harder for most investors in the public to actually get any IPO allocations for. It turns out that Fitbit Inc. (NYSE: FIT) was a very hot IPO with serious follow-on interest. Still, the IPO of Shopify Inc. (NYSE: SHOP) has so far been better in some ways in the IPO class of 2015.

24/7 Wall St. wanted to see how each IPO has turned out. We also wanted to see which one might have more upside ahead for investors who are coming on to this scene later than the first investors.

Ottawa, Canada-based Shopify priced at $17.00 per share, above an expected range of $14.00 to $16.00 — and that was raised from the original expectation of $12.00 to $14.00 per share. It sold 7.7 million shares and raised about $131 million at a market cap of around $1 billion.

What took place at Shopify was that it opened up around $28.00, and now shares are up closer to $37.00. Its stock has been cruising because of an easy, do-it-yourself e-commerce back office, and now with a Buy Button expansion.

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The long and short of the matter is that Shopify had a premium pricing, opened up over 60% or so, and has now continued to rise more than 100% above the formal IPO price — while adding about one-third of its value since the IPO actually opened at a price at which the rest of the public could buy shares.

Fitbit is riding the wearable devices wave higher. It traded its entire volume in only an hour and a half of trading after its IPO formally opened — it sold 36.575 million shares at $20.00. That formal IPO price was above the range, and it gave the company a market cap of $4 billion or so.

Fitbit shares were up 50% at $30.20 shortly after opening, and they closed at $29.68 on the debut. In just two days after the IPO (versus a few weeks for Shopify), Fitbit shares kept rising — to $32.50 on Friday and to $37.75 in midday trading Monday.

What is so different here is that Fitbit’s IPO pattern has been very similar to that of Shopify, but far faster and for a market cap that is far larger. Fitbit’s market cap on last look was $7.8 billion, versus about $2.8 billion for Shopify.

Shopify is still performing stronger than Fitbit so far, but the gains have been in much shorter of a time. Now we just have to wait to see if investors will bid up both companies — or either of them.

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