This may explain the selloff.........
Interactive Brokers' IPO Gains 4.3%;
Unusual Options Surges May Hurt It
By YVONNE BALL
May 4, 2007; Page B3
Automated options-trading firm Interactive Brokers Group Inc.'s eagerly anticipated stock offering racked up solid gains on its first day of trading Friday.
The Greenwich, Conn., company's initial public offering closed at $31.30 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, 4.3% higher than its offering price of $30.01, set by WR Hambrecht & Co. and HSBC Securities (USA) Inc. Interactive Brokers raised $1.2 billion after overwhelming demand enabled it to sell 40 million shares, well above its target of 34.5 million.
Big Footprint
The only IPO larger than Interactive Brokers this year was that of Dallas-based cellphone carrier MetroPCS Communications Inc., which raised $1.32 billion last month.
The Interactive shares were priced at the high end of the estimated range of $27 to $31 through an auction process, which sets a price through investor bidding rather than through the traditional customer allocation process followed by most investment banks. In theory, auction IPOs don't exhibit a first-day price "pop" on the first day of trading.
The number of shares offered for sale and the price range had been upgraded earlier in the week from 20 million shares at $23 to $27, doubling the size of the deal.
In 2006, the company accounted for about 15.9% of exchange-listed stock options volume traded world-wide, according to the Futures Industry Association.
Pre-Merger Surges
In an interesting disclosure amid the surge in merger activity, Interactive said its market-making operations were affected in the first quarter by "unexpectedly heavy options activity" ahead of certain corporate announcements.
"While we are unable to detail the exact frequency of these announcements in a given period and their exact financial impact on our results of operations, in the quarter ended March 31, 2007, there were a greater number of surprise or unexpected announcements preceded by heavy options activity than in prior quarters," the firm said.
"This impacts us as, when we trade with others who have different information than we do, we may accumulate unfavorable positions preceding large price movements in companies."
Write to Yvonne Ball at
yvonne.ball@dowjones.com