First Big IPO of 2015, Box Inc., Due Friday

January 19, 2015 by Paul Ausick

IPOLast week kicked off the brand-new year’s first initial public offerings (IPOs) with less than a bang. Two of three scheduled IPOs priced below the expected the range, and the third postponed its entry into the public markets.

County Bancorp Inc. (NASDAQ: ICBK) priced at $15.75, below the expected range of $16 to $18 but managed to close its first day at $17 for an IPO-day gain of 8%. Patriot National Inc. (NYSE: PN) priced its offering at $14, well below the expected range of $16 to $18. Shares closed after the first day of trading at $13.50, down about 3.6%. A mortgage real estate investment trust (REIT), Sutherland Asset Management Corp., postponed its IPO.

IPO ETF manager Renaissance Capital reported that the first two IPOs that priced in the United States this year represent a drop of about 60% compared with a year ago. Total proceeds raised come to $100 million, a drop of about 90% from 2014. The 2014 IPO total came in at $85.2 billion, the highest total in the past 10 years.

The coming week’s lone IPO is the first of 2015’s hot IPOs. Box Inc. a cloud-based storage and collaboration platform, set terms for its IPO a couple of weeks ago. The company plans to offer 12.5 million shares of Class A common stock in an IPO price range of $11 to $13, raising $150 million. At the mid-point of the price range, Box’s fully diluted market value is $1.6 billion. Joint bookrunners for the offering are Morgan Stanley & Co., Credit Suisse Securities and J.P. Morgan Securities. Other underwriters include BMO Capital Markets, Canaccord Genuity, Pacific Crest Securities, Raymond James and Wells Fargo Securities. The underwriters have a 30-day option on an additional 1.875 million shares of Class A common stock. Shares are expected to begin trading Friday on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol BOX.

Stay tuned for the last week of January, when four health care companies are currently scheduled to introduce themselves to the public markets.

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