Comes now the curious story of Smile Direct Club — the worst Initial Public Offering of 2019.
IPO prices at $23 and rests comfortably this morning at a bit above $9. Ouch. We are talking a huge loss of value, down 60%.
Here are the Smile Direct Club founders, Jordan Katzman and Alex Fenkel. Does it strike you as odd that neither of these co-founders are smiling? Seems a little creepy as if they are doing it on purpose.
If you have been off the ‘net, you may not have heard, but We (We Work) is trying to float a public issuance of its stock. Your Big Red Car wrote about it here.
Back in the middle of August when that was written, several pithy criticisms of the deal were made. Since then, We (We Work) has gotten some sense beaten into its dopey head and backtracked on the most egregious offenses against common sense and humanity.
Is it enough? is it enough? Is it enough? No. No, a thousand times NO!
There are some things in life that you have to see to believe. One is Niagara Falls. Another is the We IPO S-1, the US Securities and Exchange Commission filing that reveals the inner workings of a company before it goes public. An S-1 is like seeing a company’s scat while on the hunt.
This is that little falls between the USA and Canada.
If you have a hankering for a burger, then Beyond Meat may be for you, especially if you like plant protein burgers. Into the conversation, comes recently IPOed Beyond Meat.
BYND came public on 2 May 2019 at $25/share. Since then, the chart looks like the following. Hello, America!
From an Initial Public Offering price of $25/share, the first trade was at $46/share and the first day ended with the price $65.75/share. This was a 163% premium to the IPO price.
Hail, Uber! Uber went public last week with great fanfare befitting the third largest Initial Public Offering in US history. Hoorah, Uber! All hail Uber!
Then, they ran into reality and reality drowned them with surge pricing.
Uber came public at the low end of the proposed range (already a huge disappointment when compared to the investment bank courtship days) and promptly fell, making it the largest first day IPO loser in US history. Hello, America.
In fairness to Uber, the markets have been reeling with the US-China trade treaty negotiation news and the imposition of tariffs and retaliatory tariffs. [Trump’s fault?]
Lyft — a competitor — was also tanking adding to the cloud over the market and the IPO world.
Nonetheless, Uber has some problems.
Blue Apron — APRN NYSE — is a meal recipe/delivery company (OK, meal-kit delivery is the right buzz word, shoot me) that went public back in 2017. It was once upon a time a Unicorn. Here is what the stock has done since coming out at $10/share in July 2017 and thereby earning it a title as a $2B Unicorn. Bravo! Oh, wait. Belay that bravo, please.
As you can also see, things have not gone so well since then. Most recently the last founder has shed the CEO role as the company brought in a new CEO, Linda Findley Kozlowski, the former COO of Etsy. [All of the founders have flown the coop now.]
LFK left Etsy when they eliminated her position. She had been with them for three years. Folks fancy her an expert in eCommerce and consumer-focused business. She was also the COO of Evernote and the Director of Global Marketing and Customer Experience at Alibaba Group Holding, Ltd. Player, to be sure. Tough hill to climb.
The hype has begun on the Uber 2019 IPO – initial public offering of stock.
A Wall Street Journal article suggests that underwriters are whispering that the number is $120B – $120,000,000,000.
Of course, this is what’s called the “courtship” proposal — guys (the usual suspects Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs) looking for the assignment telling the prospective client what they want to hear to get the job; still it is a huge number.
New CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, likes the big number and says, “Bring it.”
Why does this trouble you, Big Red Car, you ask? Let me tell you.
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