Espial trading stats tell a story

In my former life, I spent almost 10 years as an investment banker. And although we are watching the best IPO market of the decade, I don’t miss it a bit. There’s just too much backstabbing and negative energy in the industry to overcome the fun you can have with clients and friends on this deal or that.

When they’re being honest (I’m not going to insert a joke here), most senior i-bankers would tell you that one of the annoying elements of the Canadian brokerage industry was watching a certain head trader at a certain independent investment bank ply his trade. At least it was annoying when he made the competition for a deal almost impossible to win as he dazzled a company CEO or CFO with his ability to trade their shares. And in enough volume to make it impossible to not choose his firm for a leading role in any particular equity offering.

At worst, he’d at least get them into a deal where the coverage guys were a tad late to the party.

This person, of course, is Mike Wekerle of GMP Securities.

Having seen the trading stats following Espial’s very successful IPO (its pretty much gone straight up to $8.80), one can only recognize that Mr. Wekerle continues to succeed in the same awe-inspiring way. GMP has traded about 69% of the shares between June 8 and June 20th, at a volume-weighted average of $7.81 per share. They co-led the deal with Genuity.

Considering the IPO was priced at $7, that tells you that they’ve put several firms into that name at prices that are a nice uptick from the IPO.

With Sandvine’s (SVC:TSX) shares responding well to bought deals (something about no stock being around to buy), perhaps my Bay Street pals should start to show bought deal letters to Espial? They only raised $25 million, which nets barely $20 million after fees and retirement of their debt.

When stocks trade up on volume, and the tech world is sunny, punch out the deals while you can. And Mike W. will trade them. And CEOs, take the money…’cause the drought can go on for an awfully long time.

MRM