Where do I find the IPO?
May 28, 2009 2:14 PM   Subscribe

Who made the initial public offering?

Where can I find a fast and reliable means of determining who made the IPO of a given company? I have a few dozen I'm search for and would rather type the symbol and get the info than do individual research, if possible.
posted by jefficator to Work & Money (10 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Google "IPO" and "CompanyName."
posted by December at 2:19 PM on May 28, 2009


What do you mean who "made" the IPO of a company? Do you mean you want to know which investment bank floated the shares on the market? If so, go to the EDGAR database and view the company's S-1 filing. That will indicate which bank floated the shares (at least at the time of the filing.)
posted by dfriedman at 2:23 PM on May 28, 2009 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: dfriedman: yes.
posted by jefficator at 2:31 PM on May 28, 2009


Response by poster: I don't work in finance...I have no idea what I'm doing here. I can't find the S-1 for any of them, even using that database. How do I proceed?
posted by jefficator at 2:45 PM on May 28, 2009


See here. You'll notice this says that the banks that floated Google's IPO were Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.

The EDGAR database's tutorial is fairly extensive; it will tell you in more detail how to find a company's S1 filing. Depending upon how old the company in question is, its S1 may not be available in digital form, in which case you would have to go to the SEC's offices in Washington DC, or their satellite office in NYC, in order to view a physical copy.
posted by dfriedman at 2:51 PM on May 28, 2009 [1 favorite]


Best answer: dfriedman is right, but I want to point out that he isn't linking to the final version of the S-1. If you want to see the prospectus with all the numbers filled in, all the underwriters and how many shares were sold through each, you have to look for the "Prospectus Filed Under Rule 424b..." version of the S-1. Here's Google's final prospectus. You'll see that it lists all the co-managers in addition to the book runners (Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse).

Here's the fast process:
1. Go to the EDGAR company search page
2. Put in the ticker symbol for your company (go to Google Finance or Yahoo Finance to search for this--it's easier than searching by company name in EDGAR)
3. On the company page you can choose to search the company's filings by type. In the Filing Type box type "424."
4. There may be more than one 424 filing--companies issue prospectuses for follow-on equity offerings and certain bond deals. Go to the oldest one and click through to the main document--make sure if says initial public offering somewhere in the first couple sentences below the company's logo.
5. Scroll down a little bit to see all the underwriters. You can also go to the Underwriters section deep in the back of the prospectus to see how many shares each underwriter sold.
posted by mullacc at 3:18 PM on May 28, 2009 [2 favorites]


Mullacc, thanks for that clarification. Better info than what I provided.
posted by dfriedman at 3:19 PM on May 28, 2009


On preview I see mullacc gave a great answer, so the only thing I would add is that you should look at the final prospectus because occasionally the underwriting syndicate will change between filing the S-1 and the actual offering.
posted by odin53 at 3:27 PM on May 28, 2009


To clarify an important point implicit in mullacc's fifth step, an IPO can (and often) will have multiple underwriters, though typically one bank will be the "lead" underwriter.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 6:01 PM on May 28, 2009 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thank you for your help. I would never have completed this assignment except that you gifted me some of your time!
posted by jefficator at 6:24 AM on May 29, 2009


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