Despite weak performances of two recent US initial public offerings, investors are not concerned about the overall IPO market, analysts said. "The fact that a telecom issue or a particular sector has not faired as well is not an indictment of the entire IPO marketplace," said Richard Peterson, a senior researcher for Thomson Financial.
On Friday, the stocks of wireless broadband network company Clearwire Corp and Chinese media and advertising company Xinhua Finance Media Ltd fell about 10 percent and 13 percent, following their debuts this week. Xinhua raised almost $300 million in its offering and Clearwire raised about $600 million.
The offerings came almost two weeks after a 9 percent drop in China's main Shanghai Composite Index helped trigger a sell-off in stocks world-wide. Their offerings followed a two-week span without an IPO worth more than $50 million, excluding closed-end funds or special purpose acquisition companies.
Activity is expect to pick up toward the end of March, Peterson said. There are 97 registered IPOs worth $13.25 billion in the IPO pipeline currently, compared with 87 deals worth $15.5 billion last year at the same time, according to data tracker Dealogic.
The US IPO market also is ahead of last year's pace, with more than 48 companies floating new shares on US exchanges since the beginning of the year raising almost $9.57 billion, compared with 43 deals worth $8.36 billion last year during the same time period, Dealogic said on Friday.
Xinhua Finance took the biggest fall among IPOs on Friday, dropping as much as 17.7 percent to $10.70 a share before closing down 12.7 percent at $11.35. In October, shares of Chinese budget hotel chain Home Inns & Hotel Management Inc sold shares at $13.80, and rose as much as 72 percent to $23.75 on its opening day.
Since February 26, the day before the sell-off in China that was sparked in part by overvaluation concerns, shares of the company have fallen about 17 percent, closing at $37.75 on Friday. Xinhua Finance's history of losses, based on proforma figures in the company's filings, made the shares a tough sell, said Francis Gaskins, an independent IPO analyst and president of IPO Desktop.
Clearwire garnered interest due in large part to the involvement of cellular industry pioneer Craig McCaw and prospects for its WiMax-based service, a next-generation technology that offers the data-transfer speed of a broadband connection without a hard-line, analysts said.
Shares of the company initially rose 11 percent on its opening day on Thursday, but closed below its $25 offering price. It raised almost $300 million in its offering. The stock dropped again on Friday, closing down about 10 percent to $22.10.
The young company's history of losses and a lack of consumer acceptance of the WiMax technology hurt the company's IPO, Gaskins said. The company lost about $284 million in 2006, compared with a loss of almost $140 million the prior year, according to documents filed with the SEC.
"How does an investor value a company that is losing money and doesn't know when they are going to break even?" Gaskins asked. Meanwhile, shares of the third major IPO of this week, network security software maker Sourcefire Inc, jumped almost 10 percent on its opening day on Friday, before returning some of its early gains, to close up about 3.3 percent at $15.49. The company raised $71.8 million in its IPO.
The company lost about $932,000 in 2006 after losing about $5.5 million the year prior, according to documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.