The IPO from Fleetmatics ends a string of poor IPO performances in the market earlier this week. The stocks of the software company opened at $22.95, up 35 percent from the offered price of $17. Fleetmatics priced its 7.8 million shares at the high end of its proposed $15 to $17 range.
The IPO from the company becomes all the more important, when just a day before, Dave & Buster’s, the restaurant and adult arcade operator, announced cancelling its IPO, saying the market for IPOs made it too wary to price, though it maintained it had enough demand. The company got discouraged by the plight of IPO’s this week, with three priced below expectations and two falling in their debuts.
The high profile IPO from Berry Plastics Group Inc (NYSE:BERY) this week slumped 5% on its debut Thursday, and was flat in recent trading on Friday. While an IPO from Lifelock Inc (NYSE:LOCK), which was priced below expectations on Tuesday night, has now fallen 15% from that IPO, to $7.66. Luxfer Holdings Plc (NYSE:LXFR) priced its offering below expectations, and Regulus Therapeutics Inc. (RGLS) cut the size of its IPO.
Ireland based Fleetmatics, which designs software to help businesses manage corporate car fleets, by providing data on vehicle location, fuel usage, speed, and mileage, had more than 16,000 customers, with some 281,000 vehicles under subscription at the end of June. Most subscribers are in the U.S., though the company has sales operations in the U.K. and in Ireland. The company reported a net loss of $366,000 in the first half of 2012, compared with a $1.59 million profit over the same period in 2011. Subscription revenue for the period jumped 37 percent, to $58.4 million from a year earlier.
The IPO from the company is expected to generate net proceeds of $94.3 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Though the software company did not reveal the plans of how it intends to use proceeds from the deal, a filing from the company said that the funds could be used for general corporate purposes, or for future, unspecified acquisitions.
The lead underwriters for Fleetmatics IPO were Barclays PLC (LON:BARC) (NYSE:BCS) and Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC)’s Merrill Lynch.
