The IPO business started with a whimper, but has ended with a bang in June. Last month was the busiest for IPO issuances since 2000, with 35 deals.
So far this year, 104 IPOs have raised $18.1 billion, according to Renaissance Capital, the IPO ETF provider.
If this keeps up, we will likely end up with over 220 deals in 2015, not quite last year's 275 deals, but still respectable. 2014, by the way, was the biggest year for new issues since the dot-com era.
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But what characterizes the second half is not so much the number of potential deals, it's the star power. There are a lot of big names that have already registered to go public that almost certainly will make it through the door in the second half.
This morning, for example, Spanish language broadcaster Univision Holdings filed for an IPO of up to $100 million, though that figure will likely change.
Over 120 companies have registered for an IPO, including several well-known names.
Likely IPOs in the second half:
- Planet Fitness (gym chain)
- Blue Buffalo (all-natural pet food)
- SunGard (software for financial institutions)
- TerraForm Global (wind/solar power yieldco)
The biggest IPO of the second half of the year will likely be Freeport-McMoRan Oil & Gas, and exploration and production company focused on deepwater projects in the Gulf of Mexico, which will likely float at least $1 billion.
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But there are others out on the horizon—big names that have not filed registration statements but are potential candidates in the second half.
Possible IPOs:
- Ferrari
- First Data
- Dropbox
- Spotify
- Chobani
- Vice Media
There are some smaller companies in hot spaces that will likely go public as well:
1) Cloudera, a data analytics company using the Hadoop platform, may follow on the successful offering of Hortonworks, which is up nearly 60 percent since its debut in December.
2) Line, the Japanese message application, is planning a dual listing in Tokyo and New York.
3) Strauss Coffee, one of the largest global coffee producers, could also IPO.
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All of this comes with the usual two main caveats about IPO investing:
1) Everything depends on market conditions. If stocks hold up, more companies will go public. If stocks do not hold up, a lot will fall by the wayside.
2) Sector momentum is equally important. Biotech, cloud (software as a service), and fast-casual restaurants were winners in the first half and are expected to remain so. Energy stocks, big movers in 2014, dried up in the first half.
By and large, though, even with markets relatively flat, IPOs did fairly well in the first half. The Renaissance Capital IPO ETF, a basket of roughly 60 recent IPOs, was up roughly 6 percent in the first half, outperforming the flat performance of the .