IPOs in the Fourth Quarter

While the IPO market in 2010 has not turned out as hoped, there is some promise looking forward. A handful of IPOs have performed well. JinkoSolar (JKS) is particularly interesting, rising 3x in four months. JKS is a Chinese solar provider and is taking advantage of cheaper Chinese costs to sell vigorously into the US and Europe. It came out at a relatively modest value, and still seems relatively unknown.

You can fund some other promising IPOs from this year with a bit of research. The clunkers this year are getting more coverage than a suite of winners. You can get a flavor of expected Q4 IPOs here.

Venture-backed IPOs have done better at 8% returns than IPOs overall (1%), but a big caution flag is over the lower quality of the 42 venture-backed IPO hopefuls in the pipeline: “71% generated less than $100 million in sales over the last 12 months and 57% have yet to turn a profit on a trailing 12-month basis.” Some high profile IPOs like Tesla are still holding up. Coming up is Brightsource, a solar-thermal provider, which recently got approval for its facility in the Mojave Desert.

About Duncan Davidson 228 Articles

Affiliation: NetService Ventures

Duncan is an advisor to NetService Ventures, where he focuses on digital media and the mobile Internet.

Previously he was at four start-ups: Xumii, a mobile social service based on a Social Addressbook; SkyPilot Networks, the performance leader of wireless mesh systems for last-mile access, where he was the founding CEO; Covad Communications (Amex: DVW, $9B market cap at the peak), the leading independent DSL access provider, where he was the founding Chairman; InterTrust Technologies ($9B market cap at the peak), the pioneer in digital rights management technologies, now owned by Sony and Philips, where he was SVP Business Development and the pitchman for the IPO.

Before these ventures, Duncan was a partner at Cambridge Venture Partners, an early-stage venture firm, and managing partner of Gemini McKenna, a joint venture between Regis McKenna's marketing firm and Gemini Consulting, the global management consulting arm of Cap Gemini.

He serves on the board or is an adviser to Aggregate Knowledge (content discovery), Livescribe (digital pen), AllVoices (citizen journalism), Xumii (mobile social addressbook), Verismo (Internet settop box), and Widevine (DRM for IPTV).

Visit: Duncan Davidson's Blogs

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