Frankfurt’s small cap exchange, the Neuer Markt, will be dominated by new issues in the IT sector next week as Artnet.com AG, Suess MicroTec AG and SHS Informationssysteme AG begin trading on May 17, 18 and 19, respectively.
Artnet.com is the first to debut on the exchange, following an initial public offering of 897,000 shares plus an option of a further 110,000 in the event of oversubscription. Bookbuilding by a consortium led by Robert Fleming & Co of London began on May 7 and ends today, working with a price range of 40-46 euros ($42.50-$48.88). The Hamburg-based company provides information and on-line auction services to Germany’s art market.
Suess MicroTec from Munich, meanwhile, is a developer and manufacturer of equipment for the microelectronics industry. Its IPO involved 4.45 million shares plus another 500,000 for oversubscription. The price range for bookbuilding is 13 euros to 15 euros ($13.81 to $15.94), with the process beginning May 11 and ending today. The consortium in that case was led by BHF Bank, a German institution.
Finally, on Wednesday, May 19 it will be the turn of SHS Informationssysteme AG, an IT services company also from Munich. SHS offers consultancy, systems integration and management, as well as applications development and value added reselling of standard software, with its main market being the telecoms sector. The financial consortium handling its IPO, comprising the Westdeutsche Landesbank and ABN Amro from Holland, began building a book on May 11 and will end the process today. The operation involves 900,000 shares plus another 100,000 for over-allotments, with a price range of 17.5 euros to 20 euros ($18.60 to $21.25).
Meanwhile, this week, of the seven flotations on the Neuer Markt , five were in the IT sector. On May 10, both services company Tria Software AG and SVC Schmidt Vogel Consulting AG floated (CI No 3,657).
The following day it was the turn of ERP developer Infor Business Solutions AG (CI No 3,642), as well as a software and services provider IDS Scheer AG and Steag HamaTech AG, a manufacturer of machinery used in the production of semiconductors. All three companies set the price for the shares in their IPOs at the top of their bookbuilding range, indicating that investor appetite for hi-tech issues remains high in Germany.
Infor’s final price was 31 euros ($32.94), when its range had been 27-31 euros, while IDS set its price at 12.50 euros ($13.28), from a range of 10.50 to 12.50, and Steag HamaTech priced at 9.25 euros ($9.83) after the range had been 8.25 to 9.25.
