Investing

Apptio and AC Immune Get Mixed Post-IPO Analyst Coverage at End of Quiet Period

Jon C. Ogg

Published: October 18, 2016 11:05 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 2:15 am

It is no secret that the flow of initial public offerings (IPOs) was slow for much of 2016. Still, some companies have managed to come public with successful offerings. Tuesday, October 18, brought the expiration of two quiet periods, so analysts at the underwriting firms can now issue coverage ratings and price targets on the companies.

24/7 Wall St. tracked several key analyst calls on Apptio Inc. (NASDAQ: APTI) and AC Immune S.A. (NASDAQ: ACIU). We have covered each of these calls, and color on the post-IPO trading on each has been offered as well.

Apptio originally sold 6 million shares in its IPO in September, and the price of $16.00 per share was above the expected range. Then it was later announced that Apptio’s overallotment option was exercised in full. That brought the IPO to 6.9 million shares.

Apptio was started with a Buy rating at both Merrill Lynch and Jefferies, and with $26 and $29 price objectives, respectively. Pacific Crest started it as Overweight with a $26 price target.

RBC Capital Markets started Apptio as Outperform with a $23 price target. Apptio also took some unenthusiastic ratings from its underwriters as well, although one of the price targets was the same as the Outperform rating above. These were as follows:

• Barclays started it as Equal Weight with a $23 price target.
• Goldman Sachs started Apptio as Neutral with a $21 price target.
• JPMorgan started it as Neutral with a $23.00 price target.

As Jefferies had the highest target seen so far, we wanted to see what the most optimistic call said of Apptio:

We believe Apptio’s unique data management platform, intuitive, SaaS-based application suite, and attractive value proposition to IT organizations positions it to successfully penetrate the logical Technology Business Management (TBM) market, where others have found it difficult to navigate in the past. The resulting future cash flow generation yields an intrinsic value well in excess of the current stock price.

Apptio was last seen down 3% at $19.89 on Tuesday. Its post-IPO trading range has been $18.78 to $24.60.

AC Immune, a Swiss biotech firm, had an IPO of 6 million shares at $11.00 apiece in September. The offering had originally been signaled closer to 4.5 million shares, but Nasdaq indicated that this was at the lower end of the $11.00 to $13.00 price range.

Credit Suisse, Jefferies and Leerink Partners acted as lead managers on the AC Immune IPO. This IPO saw three positive analyst calls on Tuesday:

• Credit Suisse started it as Outperform and with an $18 price target.
• Jefferies started it with a Buy rating and assigned a $25 target price.
• Leerink started it with an Outperform rating and a $22 price target.

AC Immune shares were up 5% at $15.16 on Wednesday, and its post-IPO trading range has been $13.01 to $19.97.