A display of LED light bulbs at a Home Depot store.FRED LUM/The Globe and Mail
Investors are flocking back to initial public offerings, with the orders for shares of pending IPO candidate Lumenpulse Inc. far exceeding the amount of stock on offer.
Two people familiar with the transaction said there were orders for at least seven times as much stock as on offer by Thursday, and the book of orders is still building quickly. Canaccord Genuity and National Bank Financial are leading the group of banks that is handling the sale.
The LED-lighting manufacturer had planned to raise $75-million but there is a good chance that could be bumped up to $100-million given the demand. One of the people said that by the time big institutions place their orders on Friday, when the books close, requests for Lumenpulse shares could top $1-billion.
Lumenpulse is a maker and reseller of LED lighting systems, and is a play on the changeover from incandescent and flourescent. The company has been growing revenue from its own products at a 78 per cent annual rate in recent years.
A solid set of IPOs from the sectors outside of Canada's traditional resource sectors will also help broaden a narrow market, as Streetwise wrote a few weeks ago when Lumenpulse was getting ready for its IPO.
The first quarter of 2014 was a quiet one for initial public offerings in Canada, but a successful Lumenpulse deal to open the second quarter may cause more companies to see what they can raise in public markets.
The other IPO that is in the market right now, Callidus Capital Corp., is also said to have generated enough demand that the company should easily make it to its target of $175-million or more with no troubles, said a person familiar with that sale. Callidus is a portfolio company of private equity firm Catalyst Capital. Callidus is a specialty lender that deals in higher-risk loans than banks are willing to handle.