Someone paid $26.00 per share for Pandora Media stock early in Wednesday’s session as the company made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange. By the closing bell the stock was at $17.42 – still up nearly 9% from its IPO pricing.
As is customary, executives of the newly public company were on hand to ring the opening bell at the NYSE. Pandora opened at $20.01 and quickly shot to the day’s high of $26.00. As the excitement wore off – and the rest of the market tanked – the newly minted shares fell back to the close at $17.42, just a bit above the low for the day of $17.35.
It was still an impressive performance for a first-day stock. Just a few days ago the IPO pricing had been expected to be $7-9, which was increased to $10-12 ahead of the actual pricing at $16.
More than 42 million shares of Pandora were traded on the first day. No doubt several changed hands more than once, since only 14.7 million were sold in the IPO.
Pandora already has coverage by one Wall Street analyst. John Tinker of Maxim Group, a boutique investment bank, rated the stock a “buy” with a target price of $23. Analysts from the firms which were underwriters for the offering are not allowed to initiate coverage until 40 days after the IPO.
RBR-TVBR observation: This will be an interesting stock to watch. It is somewhat reminiscent of the debut of the two satellite radio stocks back in the 1990s, except that they each had a plan (however deeply flawed) to get to profitability.
