Why GE Stock Price Is Lower After Synchrony IPO

Shares priced at the low-end of the expected range of $23 to $26 a share, and opened right on that $23 price. Synchrony’s shares closed Thursday at — you guessed it — $23 a share. Joint book-running managers are Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank Securities. The underwriters have an option on an additional 18.75 million shares.

Gross proceeds from the IPO total about $2.8 billion, and the new company’s market cap is around $19 billion. GE is holding on to 85% of Synchrony stock until late next year, when the company is expected to conduct a tax-free distribution of the remaining shares to its stockholders. GE was certainly looking for more than it got.

It is hard to say why the IPO received such a muted reaction. Synchrony is the largest issuer of store-brand credit cards in the United States and has been for at least 10 years. The company owns 42% of the market.

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The weak IPO may be partly due to weakness in the consumer finance sector in general. Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY), which came public in April, has faltered recently and has posted a new post-IPO low on each of the past three days. Ally raised about $2.6 billion in its IPO at a price of $24.50 per share, which is very likely the target Synchrony had it mind when it set its price range.

Another consumer finance company with a weak showing in 2014 is Santander Consumer S.A. Holdings Inc. (NYSE: SC) which is down about 24%. Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE: COF) has managed to rise 3% so far this year, and Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS) is up more than 10% year-to-date. That’s good, but in both cases it represents a drop from a 12-month gain of more than 14% for Capital One and a gain of nearly 20% for Discover.

GE’s shares closed down nearly 2% on Thursday as every one of the Dow 30 stocks posted a loss. Nothing short of a skyrocketing IPO from Synchrony could have saved the day, and that rocket fizzled on the launch pad.

Synchrony’s shares were trading down about 0.5% at $22.88 in the first 90 minutes of trading Friday. The shares hit a peak of $24.00 shortly after shares began trading Thursday. More than 50 million shares traded that day, but that number is down to about 1.5 million Friday.

GE’s stock traded up Friday by about 0.5%, at $25.28 in a 52-week range of $22.92 to $28.09. That is still down about 1.4% from the stock’s closing price on Wednesday.

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