MetroPCS Rises Despite Other Recent IPO's

MetroPCS (PCS-NYSE) did manage to be the first $1 Billion+ as far as capital raised in an IPO for 2007.  The stock priced its 50 million share IPO at $23.00 per share, and it should be noted that 12.5 million of those shares were sold by selling shareholders.  Metro’s underwriting group was a large one: joint book-running managers were Bear Stearns, Banc of America, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley; co-managers were UBS, Thomas Weisel Partners, Wachovia, and Raymond James.

Shares are trading up at $26.25 and have already seen some 19 million shares trade.  It’s good to see that (at least so far) there hasn’t been any carnage after the botched IPO’s by Vonage (VG) and Clearwire (CLWR).  That is because they are not the same sort of company as the others.  This is one of the last cellular companies that hasn’t been public and the company posted 2006 revenues of $1.547 Billion and net income of $114 million.

This morning the stock was already initiated with a BUY rating by Jefferies, which was not in the underwriting group.  The only thing worth noting here is that some of the older systems have been pulling up the "PCS" ticker as the old Sprint-PCS tracking stock, but that has probably been fixed by now.

Shares of Leap Wireless (LEAP-NASDAQ) are trading marginally lower, and Rural Cellular (RCCC-NASDAQ) are trading marginally higher.

Jon C. Ogg
April 19, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.