Twitter Prepares to Feed New Hunger for I.P.O.'s

Now, underwriters say, companies are more willing to price their offerings slightly lower to ensure that their shares trade well from the start. That means occasionally putting up with big "pops," or significant jumps in price on the first day of trading: Rocket Fuel and FireEye both doubled their offering prices in their first day of trading last month. Such sharp rises suggest that companies raised less than was possible.Twitter itself is planning to sell its shares at $17 to $20,Fashion Dresses less than what many optimistic analysts had expected. Company executives may raise that price if they find exuberant demand in their week-and-a-half trip across the country.The company and its advisers will spend the next nine days traveling to major cities like New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles,Fashion Dresses meeting with institutional investors like mutual funds and hedge funds.

On Nov. 6, they will assemble the final order book determining the final price and size of the offering.Twitter would then begin trading on Nov. 7 on the New York Stock Exchange, under the symbol TWTR.While Twitter is expected to be the most prominent tech company to go public for some time, smaller but still popular contemporaries could follow suit in the next year or two.Names mentioned by the rumor mill include Square,Fashion Dresses the payment company founded by Twitter's chairman, Jack Dorsey; Dropbox, an online storage company; and Lending Club, a specialist in online peer-to-peer lending.Such is the strength of the I.P.O. market that not even the two-week government shutdown earlier this month significantly harmed business. Deal-makers said that companies already on the road pitching their offerings witnessed little effect, though some issuers about to start the process waited until an end to the political impasse was in sight.

A bigger factor has been the strong growth of the equity markets, especially with interest rates still hovering near record lows. Philip Drury, one of Citigroup's co-head of equity capital markets for the Americas, said that investors had proved eager to pay significantly for investments that outperform the market and shares in fast-growing companies help fill that need.The rise in listings has been relatively spread out across industry sectors,Fashion Dresses though it has been dominated by the likes of energy and health care. This is my favorite article:Download IMA's First China Salary Survey.