IPO Pricing: AeroVironment

AeroVironment Inc.(AVAV-NASDAQ) has priced its IPO.  This was one that we thought was supposed to price later in the week, but the demand was there for a premium pricing or the late-week indication was not accurate.  We had been given a Wednesday to Thursday IPO trade date indication last week; but the Cramer push on CNBC’s Mad Money from last friday might have bumped the terms a bit more.

AeroVironment is a maker of small unmanned backpack-sized recon-aircraft used by the military, although it does derive some corporate revenues; more can be found on the company homepage.  The deal priced 6.7 million shares at $17.00 per share, above the $14.00 to $16.00 range.  The underwriters have the option to purchase an additional 1 million shares to cover overallotments and it will have slightly north of a $350 million market cap for the offering price.

As noted, Goldman Sachs is the lead underwriter; co-managers are listed as Friedman Billings Ramsay, Jefferies, Raymond James, Thomas Weisel, and Stifel Nicolaus.  The company had revenues of $139 million and profit of approximately $11 million in 2006. This was expected to get a slight bump at pricing, but Cramer got on this one last Friday and now many more inquiries have been made and the opening price could easily be above $19.00 or $20.00.  We’ll have to see how the market is on Tuesday before hanging any finite opening price out there.

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Jon C. Ogg
January 22, 2007