Contact: Brenon Daly
Pulled prospectuses, cut terms and broken issues – it’s a singularly poor time for any company to go public. We’ve already chronicled the dispiriting ‘new normal’ for IPOs, with smaller offerings and lower valuations. But just when it seemed that the IPO market couldn’t sink any further, along came Motricity’s offering.
The debut last Friday from the mobile data platform provider had to be trimmed, both in the number of shares and the price. Originally, Motricity planned to sell 6.75 million shares at $14-$16 each. At the midpoint of the range, that would have netted the unprofitable company, which has rung up a total deficit of some $313m, about $100m.
Instead, Motricity managed to raise just half that amount. It ended up selling just five million shares at $10 each, raising just $50m. Since then, the newly public shares been underwater, having only changed hands in the single digits. How bad is that? Consider this: Motricity’s valuation as a public company ($350m) is less than the amount of money that it raised as a private company.
Yeah but you can bet Ryan Wuerch, the illustrous CEO (who just got a $75,000 raise!) will still get his payday!