If the percentage of my traffic that comes from Google searches involving Interactive Brokers is any indication, Investors are clearly clamoring for shares of the Interactive Brokers (IBKR) IPO ahead of public trading this Friday. Also, just today, underwriters have increased the size of the offering from 20 million shares to 34.5 million while increasing the expected pricing range from $23 – 27 to $27 – 31. The company is giving Wall St the could shoulder and going Dutch just as Google (GOOG) did a couple years ago with the open auction using the services of WR Hambrecht (OpenIPO). It levels the playing field between institutional and retail investors giving everyone a chance at a piece of the IPO pie. From the WR Hambrecht website:
"The OpenIPO® auction, for example, levels the playing field in initial public offerings, allowing individuals and institutional investors to bid online for shares of an IPO. All investors end up paying the same price – a price determined by the auction. The OpenBook® auction for corporate bonds, is an online system that offers transparent, real-time price discovery. OpenFollowOn® auction extends the transparency and real-time price discovery of the OpenBook auction to follow-on equity offerings allowing interactive bidding and gives investors a view into the book as it builds.
I’ll be sitting this one out, but if you’re interested in bidding, Interactive Broker (IBKR) customers can do it easily from their account page or you can go through other participants. Trader Narrative recently wrote up a nice summary about how the process works.
In my opinion, these shares are going to get priced way above a reasonable valuation due to it’s popularity. That doesn’t mean it can’t spike significantly higher still after hitting the open the market, but I just prefer to wait a few days for the dust to settle. At any rate, it will be an interesting to watch to for the rest of the year. For an interesting post on coming up with a valuation for Interactive Brokers (IBKR) have a look at Frank’s post over at Technicator.net