The mainstream underwriters finally were able to out-maneuver their lesser-esteemed counterparts last week, as a mainstream IPO managed to do what none of the low-float candidates on the calendar at the start of the week could manage, and debuted on a major exchange.

The results weren’t all that encouraging for future mainstream deals, and we’ve already seen Instacart scared off from attempting to list this year. Mainstream IPOs desperate enough to proceed in this market may be worth consideration based on the theory that retail traders would conceivably be getting an opportunity to buy in at a ‘more reasonable’ price than that which we were presented with in most IPOs over the past few years.

On the low-float IPO front, we’re still not seeing much enthusiasm in the retail sector to get any of the slated deals into the starting blocks, let alone provide a high-conviction setup for a significant allocation request or a debut trade. That may change if we can get a debut runner, but with all the scrutiny coming down from NASDAQ on these deals, it’s hard to imagine the underwriters being able to conjure their forces of market sorcery under such watchful eyes.

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Ok, Let’s take a look at what happened last week in IPO Land:

Prime Medicine (PRME) – October 20, 2022 | 10.3M Shares
IPO Price: $17.00
Debut Price: $18.97
Day 1 High: $19.00
Day 1 Low: $15.00
High Since Debut: $19.00
Low Since Debut: $14.40

Day 1 Action: PRME managed to drum up sufficient ‘smart money’ demand to not only debut at mid-range, but upsized the deal from 8.9M shares to 10.3M shares by the time they went live in a relatively weak market. Beyond that, the stock opened at a premium of $18.97 and for a minute, it looked like it might hold the debut price and muster a rally… a minute later, reality set in, and the stock started what would become a steady decline down to a bottom at $15.27 before it delivered any kind of reversal: a rally back up to $16.50 that ran out of steam long before the end of regular market hours, and before close it made new lows at $15.10 before a slight rally into the close at $15.37.

Day 2 Action: Day 2 pre-market spikes as high as $17.00 might look nice on the chart, but the volume was so low as to be meaningless (just 23 shares traded on that candle), but Day 2 did get started on the right foot, opening at $15.48 before dumping down to $14.94 within the first 15 minutes of trading. But from there it managed to climb back to as high as $16.24 on the day, closing the week $15.76.

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Recent IPO Runners:

I was on holiday last week, and will return to my desk Thursday this week, so I didn’t have my eyes on the daily movers, but it doesn’t seem like we had much action in IPO land last week. Hopefully with the 90-day LPX of the post-HKD slate approaching, we see some action in that sector.

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