LED & China Investing: SemiLEDs IPO (LEDS, DANG, YOKU)

The demand for Chinese IPOs in America is hot.  The light-emitting diodes (LEDs) market is also one that has major opportunities for energy efficiency and growth investing ahead.  Marrying LEDs and China (or almost China) seems a fit.  That brings up SemiLEDs Corp. (NASDAQ: LEDS).  The company sold some 5.25 million ADRs at $17.00 in its initial public offering this morning, and that is above the range of $14.50 to $16.50 per share.

LEDS is up close to 50% in its debut as shares are up at $24.95.  At 11:00 AM EST there had been right at 3 million shares traded.  We just saw two Chinese IPOs double after their NYSE debut on Wednesday.  Those two were in Youku.com Inc. (NYSE: YOKU) and E-commerce China Dangdang Inc. (NYSE: DANG).

SemiLEDs is a company which develops chips and develops components for LEDs with manufacturing operations in Taiwan.  The company also plans to expand its manufacturing capacity there as well.  Besides just the Taiwan manufacturing, SemiLEDS has three joint-venture interests in Taiwan, China, and Malaysia.

BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, and Jefferies were the joint book-runners; co-managers are listed as Canaccord Genuity and Caris & Company.  SemiLEDs granted the underwriting syndicate a 30-day option to buy up to 787,500 shares to cover overallotments.  Based upon the reception, you can be assured that the overallotment option was exercised.

After the offering, there are some 26 million shares authorized.  The net proceeds from this offering will come to $91.4 million after the overallotment.

JON C. OGG