IPOs: Weekly Review and Preview

Lumenis Ltd. (NASDAQ: LMNS) came public on Thursday at an IPO price of $12.50, well below its expected range of $15 to $17. The Israel-based maker of minimally invasive clinical solutions for surgical, ophthalmic and aesthetic applications offered 6.25 million class B ordinary shares and underwriters have a 30-day option on an additional 937,500 shares. The company’s other class of shares are called simply “ordinary” shares and carry no additional voting or other privileges. The “ordinary” shares will automatically convert to class B shares when the lock-up period ends, 181 days after the IPO. Shares closed at $12.15 on the stock’s IPO day and at $12.20 on Friday. Shares peaked at $13.38 early Thursday morning.

Varonis Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: VRNS) was last week’s hot IPO. The IPO was sold at $22 a share. The shares closed at exactly double that price, $44 a share. The company sold 4.8 million shares, and, at the IPO price, its market value at the beginning of the day was about $524 million. Varonis makes a software platform that large enterprises can use to manage their unstructured data, such as letters, memos, and emails — the stuff created by people that is difficult to map and manage. Varonis is the first technology company to hold an IPO in 2014 which has so far been the year of the biotechs.

Next week’s scheduled IPO will launch another pharmaceutical company, Recro Pharma Inc., a clinical stage specialty firm that is developing non-opioid pain treatments. The company’s first product is a post-operative pain killer about to enter a Phase IIb trial. According to its amended Form S-1/A filed on Friday, the firm intends to offer 2.5 million shares of common stock in a range of $10 to $12 a share. In January the company effected a 1-for-25 reverse stock split and expects to have 5.38 million shares outstanding following the IPO. The stock will trade on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the ticker symbol “REPH.”