V (Visa) IPO Prices; Set To Open For Trading on Wednesday

The hotly-anticipated V (Visa) IPO has priced tonight at $44 per share, and will open for trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday morning.

Visa is going public in the midst of some pretty tremendous turmoil in the stock market. Some had speculated that if the market had continued to plummet on Tuesday that Visa would have postponed this offering - I believe that it would have priced anyways due to the tremendous interest in this company. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the Dow went up over 400 points today.

The company will raise $17.9 billion in this offering as their underwriters have sold 406 million shares for $44 a piece, which is higher than the expected range of $37 - $42. This is impressive considering the current state of the stock market, but not entirely surprising given the interest in this deal.

The pricing will value the entire company at $42.5 billion dollars, much higher than the current $27.57 billion dollar valuation that Mastercard sports. The performance of Mastercard after their IPO is one of the many reasons why the V IPO will be so hot. I would expect that Visa will continue to tack on market cap once the issue opens.

This IPO will be the largest ever in America, trumping the $10.6 billion dollar offering of AT & T Wireless Group in 2000, and will be the second largest offering ever behind Industrial & Commercial Bank of China.

Visa reported a total profit of $424 million dollars in their most recent quarter on revenues of $1.49 billion dollars.

The Visa IPO was managed by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs.

Stay tuned to this page on Wednesday for up to date reports as to how the stock is trading.

Filed under: General Market News