Published November 8, 2013
Our digital marketing agency isn’t a publicly traded company, but yesterday, the fast-paced social media powerhouse, Twitter, went public on the New York Stock Exchange. So, in honor of companies’ initial public offerings, I though it would be fun to compile the four best and four worst IPOs in recent history.
eBay, the online consumer-to-consumer corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, experienced one of the most successful first-day IPOs to date. On September 24, 1998, the company went public at $18 a share and nearly tripled its price, closing at $53. The company raised $63 million and stayed well above $53, touching over $300 in early 1999. Today, shares are still worth nearly $53.
Before Google went public on August 19, 2004, there were many skeptical about the decision. The company had received criticism for a Playboy magazine interview, a last-minute drop in their IPO price, which began at $85 a share. Nevertheless, Google decided to go public and raised $1.6 billion. By 2007, shares were over $600 and today, they are over $1,000.
The telecommunications company AT&T’s separate entity of AT&T Wireless went public on April 26, 2000 with shares set at $29.50. Despite a shaky market due to newly-released inflation data, AT&T sold 360 million shares and raised a total of $10.6 billion in just one day, which was (at the time) the largest IPO in history. The stock is now under AT&T Inc. (T) and is still successful.
On December 13, 1991, San Diego-based wireless technology company Qualcomm went public with shares at $18. The company’s stock was successful and grew rapidly over the next eight years, peaking at $176.13 a share in December of 1999. Today, the company is still doing well, with shares at $69.
This biotechnology firm in Seattle went public on October 7, 2009 with a share price of $10. The company hoped to raise $80 million, however, before it went public, an ex-chief executive accused Omeros of forging timekeeping records in order to get an NIH grant. The company ended up raising $62 million, but declined 36% in its first two weeks of being public and 42% by November.
FriendFinder Networks, the company that owns FriendFinder.com, Penthouse, and a slew of sex and dating websites, went public on May 11, 2011 and looked promising at first. The social company opened with a share price of $10 and raised $50 million. However, just a year later, the company’s stock tanked to just $1.20 a share.
Formerly known as Man Financial, this commodities brokerage firm based in New York City saw trouble after it went public on July 18, 2007. The company opened with a share price of $30 and ended up raising nearly $3 billion. In early 2008, however, MF Global was forced to fork over $141 million for unauthorized trading and was then fined $10 million by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and $495,000 by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. MF Global filed for bankruptcy in October 2011.
Headquartered in California, this grocery delivery service went public in November of 1999 and raised $375 million. The company also received $1 billion from private investment firms, yet with so much money, Webvan still couldn’t make it. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2001; many people say it’s because the company built 300,000-square-foot distribution centers that cost $25 million to build and because they lost so much money during processing and delivery fees.
