Investors anxious to plunk their money down on the latest high-profile new stock deal will have to wait a bit.
As is typical in early January, not a lot of companies are planning stock market debuts.
Next week, only two companies are expected to go forward with initial public offerings. Although a few more are in line for the following week, there aren't many big-ticket issues in the bunch.
It isn't until the last week of the month that the IPO market really starts to heat up -- provided the rest of Wall Street holds up, that is.
During the last full week of January, a slew of hefty offerings are set to hit the market, led by a US$1.8 billion deal from insurance veteran John Hancock. Along with Hancock, expect the usual mix of tech stocks and dot-com offerings.
"It'll be back to a normal, fairly busy schedule, assuming the Nasdaq doesn't keep losing 150 points a day," said Corey Ostman, chief technology officer at Alert IPO.
Although none of the tech offerings on the agenda come close to rivaling Hancock in sheer bulk, there are a few pricey deals on the horizon.
Formus Communications, a company that specializes in providing high-speed wireless Internet services to European businesses, hopes to raise $150 million in an offering tentatively set for mid-January. Discount retailer Buy.com is trying to raise the same amount in a late January IPO. And in early February, Dobson Communications, which sells cell phone service to rural and suburban areas in the US, plans to launch a $500 million IPO.
As usual, analysts expect a number of offerings will do very, very nicely. But this year, they're not expecting every company with a dot-com in its name to get a big first-day run-up.
"IPO investors are too used to being wowed," said David Menlow, president of IPOFinancial.com. "When we start getting companies that look like clones of existing platforms, that's when the trouble bell sounds."
Menlow said he expects issues like Formus, that specialize in high-demand areas like Internet infrastructure, to perform well. He's less certain about other sectors, like online retailing.
Buy.com, a money-losing online retailer that sells items below cost and makes up the difference by selling advertising, may be shooting too high with its planned $150 million offering, said Vincent Slavin, an institutional trader with Cantor Fitzgerald who tracks IPOs.
"That area's starting to loosen up. You're reaching the saturation point," Slavin said, noting that the company already has plenty of competition. "With e-commerce alone, you ain't gonna make it."
Slavin said he had more confidence in a few of the others planning to debut in the next month or so, like wireless banking service provider 724 Solutions, optical telecom equipment-maker Avanex, Dobson, and college admissions site Embark.com.
