Friday, July 30, 2010

Rare Earth Metals: Molycorp IPO Very Weak (MCP)

The stock is changing hands at $12.32, down another 53 cents.
The issue was priced below the expected range and closed down from there.
$14.00 price, closed its first day at $12.85.
Here's Greentech:
Molycorp: Another Dud Green IPO
Tesla, Jinko above water; Molycorp, A123, Codexis and Energy Recovery below
The green industry is right one out of every three times.

Molycorp, which wants to mine rare earth elements for use in car batteries and electronics from a big pit in southern California, held an IPO today. The company said earlier in the month that it planned to sell 28 million shares for $15 to $17 a share. It dropped the price to $13.25 a share in the IPO yesterday and on the first day of public trading the stock is hovering between $12 and $13.

In other words, it is starting life as a tadpole -- that is, underwater.

That's becoming, unfortunately, a pattern in the industry. A123 Systems held an IPO to great fanfare (and the occasional note of skepticism) last year. The stock went out at $13.50 It rose sharply but then dropped to the $10 to $11 range. Suddenly, everyone was a critic. Codexis, the biofuel and green chemistry specialist, sold 6 million shares for $13 a share earlier this year. The stock now goes for $9 a share. In 2008, desalination expert Energy Recovery went out at $8. It now sells for $4. Energy Recovery went public before the crash so the price decline can be attributed to a large extent to the recession, but a drop is a drop....MORE