When is an IPO considered failure?
I am reading case of Air Berlin IPO. It has detail that investors where unhappy as the operating profit was less and company's strategy was not aligned to increase profit. But why did knowing everything did Air Berlin released its IPO that was deemed to be unsuccessful.
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Just skimming through the Wikipedia article on airberlin, I notice there is more to the story than simply "airberlin's IPO failed, so they postponed it and did it anyways."
3 points to keep in mind about IPOs:
1) An IPO is the mechanism for taking a private company and setting it up for shares to be owned by "the public".
2) The process of selling shares to the public often allows original owners and/or early investors to "cash out". Most countries (including member nations of the EU) limit some transactions like pre-IPO companies to "accredited investors".
3) Selling shares to the public also can allow the company to access more funds for growth. This is particularly important in a capital-intensive business like an airline; new B737-MAX costs >0M. New A320neo costs >5M USD.
Ultimately, the question of a successful IPO depends on how you define success. Initially, there was a lot of concern that the IPO was set up with too much focus on goal #2 ... allowing the management & owners to cash out.
It looks like the first approach was not meeting good opinions in the market during 2006. A major concern was that the initial approach focused on management only cashing out its shares and no money actually going to the company to support its future.
The investment bankers restructured the IPO, including the issuance of more new shares so that more $ could end up in the company's accounts, not just in the accounts of the management.
If anything, it's still a pretty successful IPO given that the shares were successfully listed, the company collected the money it needed to invest and grow, and the management still cashed out.
Different stakeholders have different views of 'failure'. Maybe from Air Berlin's point of view it was a failure, but technically speaking it is not really possible to 'fail'. As long as all shares were purchased, which is a virtual guarantee since the investment banks who underwrite the IPO by and large must do to some extent, it will always be 'successful'.
A decrease in value of shares immediately after IPO means that the investment bank who did the IPO for Air Berlin didn't match its IPO price with market expectations, causing shorts on the stock, and thus a decline. No failure per se.
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