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Company Information: IPO - Initial Public Offerings

Introductory guide to find international and national company information.

IPO - clarification of the concept

IPO - initial public offering:
refers to the process of offering shares of a private corporation to the public in a new stock issuance. Public share issuance allows a company to raise capital from public investors. 

  • An initial public offering (IPO) refers to the process of offering shares of a private corporation to the public in a new stock issuance. 
  • Companies must meet requirements by exchanges and stock exchange supervisions as e.g. the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to hold an initial public offering (IPO).
  • IPOs provide companies with an opportunity to obtain capital by offering shares through the primary market.
  • Typically, companies hire investment banks to market, gauge demand, set the IPO price and date, and more.
  • An IPO can be seen as an exit strategy for the company’s founders and early investors, realizing the full profit from their private investment.

(Sourcce: Investopedia)

IPOs on the principal stock markets

IPO - other resources

Databases to find information about IPOs

ORBIS M&A

Content
Orbis M&A contains information and data on mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, private equity, and venture capital deals. The database contains information on completed, pending, withdrawn, announced, and rumoured deals. 
Coverage:
European deals from 1997 and forward; global deals from 2001 and forward.
Additional features include news, ranking, and tables about M&A activities.
 

Requesting data.

  1. Create your search query by applying filters to all deals in Orbis M&A. For example, you might be interested in deals in a specific period, country, size, or industry.
  2. Select the Deals Type > IPO / IPO Planned

     
    1. Limit your search result by Time period, Deal status, Deal structure etc.
  3. Create your report by getting information on the selected deals or the company involved (Add/remove columns)
  4. Export your report.

To search in more details

 

Setting the criteria:
We are interested in completed IPOs between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2022 of European companies.

  • Although it is possible to find IPOs from the All deals section, an easier approach would be to start our search from Deal > Deal type > IPO. In this section we will find all criteria related to equity offerings. The definition of an IPO in ORBIS M&A states that the stocks of the company going public should already have started trading. Therefore, all IPO deals are automatically completed.
  • To add the first criterion, click on ‘Deal types’. Now unfold the folder IPO and select ‘initial public offering’. Click on ‘OK’ in the lower right corner to be redirected to the previous page. The criterion has been added to our search strategy.
  • For the next criterion click on ‘Time Period’. Here we can choose between a relative/absolute date range from the dropdown menu or we can set our own custom date range. Often, we will prefer the latter. Click on the ‘selection circle’ and type in 01/01/2000 and 01/01/2023.  The click on the Deal status to get only completed deals select ‘Complete- confirmed’ and ‘Completed-assumed’. While this did not matter for the selection of IPOs it does matter for the time period. For example, if a rumor of an IPO started in 2014, but it was actually completed in 2015 we do not want to include this deal in our sample. Then click on ‘OK’.
  • The final step is to click on ‘Location’>Geograhy> and select the Western Europe. In Location > Crossborder deals > Target / Acquiror company
    In an IPO the target refers to the company going public. Click on ‘OK’

 

Creating the report.
It is possible to specify the information to be downloaded on the deals or companies involved. Click on “Add/remove columns".

  • The left part contains all variables available in Orbis M&A. This part is subdivided into a Deal, Company, and Advisor section. It is possible to search for the variables by going through the separate sections and folders or by using the search box at the top of the middle part. The selected variables appear at the right-hand section. When chosen all the variables, click on ‘OK’. Do note that some variable definitions are slightly different for IPOs than for M&A deals.
  • Note! Orbis M&A does offer some information on the deal such as the deal value and sometimes offer price. However, it is best to collect additional stock price information from other databases such as Bloomberg or Datastream. Therefore, make sure to include the ISIN code. Standard financials can be downloaded directly from Orbis M& under Companies. However more specific items should be collected from databases such as Orbis, Bloomberg or Datastream. Such as items from the balance sheet, profit & loss account, or cash flow statement

Exporting the report.

  • Click on ‘Excel’.
  • Next choose your format. Give the file a name and click on ‘OK’.
  • Note: When exporting the reports, one can encounter two types of limitations: - limitation in the format that is being used. For example .xlsx can only hold 1,048,576 rows. This means that the number of deals should be less when using this format (without accounting for the possible multiple lines for one deal). - limitation in the amount of data that can be exported. The only way to work around this issue is by splitting the report into several parts. For example, choose to download the deals by country instead of for a whole region or split the report by deal and company variables. Saving and Uploading. In Orbis M&A you can save your search strategy to your drive. Click on ‘save’ above the search strategy. In the pop-up menu enter a name for the strategy and click on ‘save’ to the left. This will allow you to download the search strategy to your drive. To load your search strategy, go to ‘Saved searches’ and click on ‘Load from disk’

Bloomberg

 

IPO Date:

  • To find the IPO date of a specific company, type the company's ticker followed by IPO <GO>
  • Use IPO to monitor equity offerings by stage, industry sector, time period, currency or region. You can use IPO to compare year-over-year offerings performance data, display bar charts of the best and worst performers by offer-price-to-date-return percentage, or display a 12-month summary chart by amount or number of issues. You can also use IPO to access a custom company name search, underwriter rankings, Bloomberg World IPO indices and IPO news headlines
  • To find IPO and Additional Offering dates for a specific company, type CACT to perform a Corporate Action Search. Change left dropdown from All Securities to Single Security. Enter company's ticker in field to the right. Adjust dates then hit Enter key, then Filter Actions to IPO/ADDL. Click on an action to access details about the offering. 
  • Use CACT to screen for companies by IPO/Additional Offering date. Type CACT in the command line. Leave left dropdown reflecting All Securities. Adjust date. Filter Actions to IPO/ADDL.

Eikon

IPO via Screener (Excel add-in) or Deal Screener <DSCREEN> (via web-udgaven):

Open the Screener and then change the Universe to Deals and include Equity as Asset Class. Add IPO as Issue Type and e.g. Norway as Target Market. Then you get a list of IPO results. It is possible to add columns to your report as e.g. ISIN, Ticker and RIC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IPOs via Equity Offering <IPO> app:

There is an app called Equity Offering <IPO> (Deals Market Overview). This one gives an overview by year, but time series data is more difficult to retrieve this way.

 

 

WRDS

Compustat (North America, Compustat Global)
Search hint:
Choose database > Fundamentals annual > search with CTRL-F: IPO date
WRDS explanation: This item is the date of a company's initial public stock offering. If the date of a company's initial public stock offering is not available, the first trading date in the major exchange is used.


CRSP
According to WRDS support, it should be somewhere under this data item:

Search hint:
CRSP > Stock/ security files > stock header info >
The data items concerned are

Begin of stock data (in output labeled BEGDAT)
End of stock data (in output labeled ENDDAT)
Some additional complications will appear in a few cases when a firm (PERMCO) had multiple securities (PERMNOs). In those cases, you would need to take the oldest BEGDAT and the latest ENDDAT.

Preqin

Search for Private Equity > Deal Type > Exits > IPO & Private Placements

STATISTA

Statista is a good tool if you are looking for a shortcut to an overview and data on the IPO market

 

If you choose e.g. Topics  you find reports on the IPO market

Factiva

Search for news and articles by limiting your search to Subject search

Business Source Ultimate

Search for journal articles using relevant key words as Going public (Securities)

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