Mid-Con Energy Seeks Approval for IPO

- Mid-Con Energy Seeks Approval for IPO

Friday, August 26, 2011
Tulsa World, Okla.
by Rod Walton

Privately held waterflood oil producer Mid-Con Energy LP is seeking federal approval for an initial public offering as a master limited partnership.

The form S-1 registration request, filed earlier this month with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, estimates a maximum of $140 million in equity from the proposed IPO. If granted, Mid-Con Energy hopes to be listed on the Nasdaq electronic exchange under the ticker symbol MCEP.

"Our management team has significant industry experience, especially with waterflood projects and, as a result, our operations focus primarily on enhancing the development of producing oil properties through waterflooding," the S-1 filing reads.

Mid-Con President Randy Olmstead founded the company seven years ago with capital from equity firm Yorktown Partners. Mid-Con's operating subsidiary, RDT Properties Inc., was started in 1986 to buy and operate mature waterflood properties.

The new partnership was incorporated last month in Delaware. Mid-Con Energy's production is focused on properties in southern and northeastern Oklahoma and Colorado.

The fields "primarily consist of mature, legacy onshore oil reservoirs with long-lived, relatively predictable production profiles and low production decline rates," the federal filing reads. More than 90 percent of Mid-Con's properties are produced under waterflood techniques, in which water is injected into the reservoir formation to displace residual oil and into adjacent production wells.

Mid-Con Energy's proved reserves totaled an estimated 7.9 million barrels of oil equivalent, most of that crude oil.

The master limited partnership structure eliminates corporate taxes on profits. The MLP is required to distribute much of its available cashflow through distributions to unitholders, who are taxed on those payouts.

Mid-Con is the fourth Tulsa energy firm to go public or announce a planned IPO in recent months. On Wednesday, Laredo Petroleum filed its own SEC papers seeking an initial public offering raising up to $450 million in equity.

Tulsa-based propane marketer NGL Energy Partners LP held its IPO earlier this year and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Williams Cos. Inc. plans to set a partial IPO for its exploration and production subsidiary, WPX Energy Inc., later this year. The rest of WPX will be separated in a tax-free spinoff to Williams shareholders in 2012, according to reports.

Copyright (c) 2011 Tulsa World (Tulsa, Okla.)

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Ex-BP Chief's Vallares Lifts IPO Size to $2.18B

- Ex-BP Chief's Vallares Lifts IPO Size to $2.18B

Friday, June 17, 2011
Dow Jones Newswires
LONDON
by Alexis Flynn & Selina Williams

Vallares, the new investment vehicle headed by financier Nathaniel Rothschild and former BP chief executive Tony Hayward, raised GBP1.35 billion ($2.18B) to invest in emerging-market oil and gas assets, some 35% more than it had anticipated.

Hayward said the level of support "demonstrates the confidence investors have in the strong fundamentals of the resources sector," and said the company will now search for "suitable acquisition opportunities."

Vallares is a cash shell that will use the capital raised to merge or invest with existing companies. Hayward said last week it would look at assets worth between GBP3 billion and GBP8 billion.

Co-founder Julian Metherell said the majority of investor interest came from U.S. and U.K. long-only funds and hedge funds, with some support from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds.

Vallares' founders--Hayward, Rothschild, Metherell and Tom Daniel--invested GBP100 million, of which GBP80 million is in ordinary share capital and GBP20 million in incentivized shares and securities designed to ensure an acquisition happens within a mandated timeframe.

Metherell said it was "very likely" Hayward would head an acquired company, marking his return to the spotlight less than a year after he left BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

"He is a world-class CEO. I think any partner who wanted to come into Vallares would be hard pressed to find a better person to run a company than T. Hayward," said Metherell.

Metherell said voting rights for any majority owners following a transaction would be capped at 29.9%.

Vallares earlier Friday placed 133 million ordinary shares at GBP10 a share. Conditional dealings began Friday under the ticker symbol VLRS, and at 0927 GMT they were trading down five pence, or 0.5%, at 995 pence, slightly underperforming a 0.2% decline in the FTSE 100 index.

Admission to the London Stock Exchange and unconditional dealings on the main market for listed securities is expected 0700 GMT on June 22.

Vallares is so named in a nod to Rothschild's earlier commodities venture Vallar, and the two companies' business models do chime. Rothschild last year raised $700 million before buying Indonesian coal assets valued at some GBP3 billion. Shares in Vallar have risen 21% since their summer 2010 debut.

Credit Suisse is acting as global coordinator and joint bookrunner, J.P. Morgan Cazenove is acting as joint bookrunner and Evolution Securities is acting as co-lead manager in the share placing.

Copyright (c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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Facebook May Be Losing Viewers, Possible Affect On IPO

- Facebook May Be Losing Viewers, Possible Affect On IPO



Jun 14, 2011

A world map produced by Vincenzo Cosenza found that Facebook is now the most popular social network in 119 out of 134 countries despite rumors of losing users in the United States in the month of May. Although Cosenza did not break out exact traffic data, he did say however that Facebook was the most popular social network in the United States, beating out Twitter and LinkedIn.

However, a report from Inside Facebook did say that they lost U.S. users in the month of May, going from 155.2 million to 149.4 million by the end of the month.

Facebook did make a statement with regards to the Inside Facebook data, stating that, "from time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions. Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn't designed to be a source for tracking the overall growth of Facebook."

However, the question arises about whether or not this user data will affect Facebook's plans for an initial public offering.

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Facebook Will Likely Go Public in Q1 of 2012

- Facebook Will Likely Go Public in Q1 of 2012



Jun 13, 2011

The growing social networking behemoth, Facebook, Inc, will likely go public in the first quarter of 2012 with a valuating that could top $100 billion, according to people familiar with the matter cited in a CNBC report.

One factor in the timing of the company's IPO is the Securities and Exchange Commission's requirement that companies must disclose financial information if they have more than 500 private investors.

Facebook, which is approaching 700 million registered users, is also facing pressure from current employees who, because of internal restrictions, cannot sell their private shares on the secondary market, according to the unnamed sources.

SharesPost, a private exchange that buys and sells shares of non-public companies, last sold 100,000 shares of the company for $3.4 million, putting Facebook's valuation at $85 billion.

In March, the investment firm General Atlantic bought one tenth of one percent of Facebook, valuing the company at $65 billion, and the Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) deal worth $1.5 billion just six weeks before that valued the company at $50 billion, meaning the value of the social networking website had grown 30% in that short time.

Meanwhile, the company reported user losses in several key markets, including a drop of 6 million in the United States and 1.5 million in Canada. User counts also dropped by over 100,000 in the UK, Norway, and Russia, according to Inside Facebook.

It has been noted that once Facebook reaches around 50% of the total population in a given country, growth generally slows to a halt. Facebook still added 11.8 million users overall in May, driven by strong growth in Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, Argentina, India, Colombia and the Philippines. Last year, the typical growth rate was about 20 million users per month.

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Ex-BP CEO's Energy Investment Vehicle Aims for $1.6B IPO

- Ex-BP CEO's Energy Investment Vehicle Aims for $1.6B IPO

Thursday, June 09, 2011
Dow Jones Newswires
LONDON (Dow Jones Newswires)
by Alexis Flynn

The new investment vehicle headed by financier Nathaniel Rothschild and former BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward Thursday announced plans for a London listing later this month, that could see the venture raise as much as GBP1 billion to invest in emerging market oil and gas assets.

The special purpose acquisition company, called Vallares in a nod to Rothschild's earlier commodities venture Vallar, marks Hayward's return to the spotlight less than a year after he left BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The June initial public offering will aim to sate investor hunger for resource stocks following the listing of giant commodities trader Glencore International last month.

Vallares, which has attracted the backing of a number of U.S. and U.K. long-only and hedge funds as well as sovereign wealth funds, will look to invest primarily in upstream oil and gas exploration and production, said Hayward.

"What we're looking to fund is an emerging market player with good resources and good assets but that has neither the capital nor capability to fully develop them, and to merge with them," said Hayward, who explained that Vallares wouldn't use the capital raised to buy assets, but would instead look to use its equity to enact mergers with emerging market firms, who would then benefit from London's access to capital and Vallares' management experience.

Hayward said Vallares was looking at a range of investment targets.

"The truth is we have a very broad base pipeline of potential ideas. It does pretty well spread the world, from South America, West Africa, Russia, the Middle East, South East Asia," said Hayward.

In addition to Hayward and Rothschild, Vallares was founded by former head of Goldman Sachs' U.K. investment banking business, Julian Metherell and Tom Daniel, who helped establish Vallar with Rothschild.

The firm's senior management team, meanwhile, includes ex-BAE Systems Group Finance Director George Rose and former Enterprise Oil CEO Sir Graham Hearne.

Hayward said he would build an operating team around him with "the necessary skills and capabilities." However, he downplayed the prospects of approaching his ex-colleagues at BP. "Where they come from will depend a little bit on the day, but I'm certainly not going to go poaching from any of my previous employers, so you don't need to worry about that," he said.

Credit Suisse Group (CS) is acting as the IPO's global co-ordinator and joint bookrunner, while J.P. Morgan Cazenove is acting as joint bookrunner and Evolution Securities is acting as co-lead manager.

Copyright (c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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Sunshine Oilsands Eyes $1B IPO

- Sunshine Oilsands Eyes $1B IPO

Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Dow Jones Newswires
by Yvonne Lee & Edward Welsch

The buzz about Hong Kong's market for initial public offerings is luring Sunshine Oilsands Ltd., an early-stage Canadian oil-sands company that could lose some of its land to a preserve for caribou.

The Calgary-based company wants to raise around US $1 billion through an IPO in the fourth quarter, a person familiar with the situation said Tuesday. It plans to submit its listing application in July and has hired Holdings Ltd. to handle the share sale.

The listing plan comes as Canadian energy companies seek investments from investors in China amid rising demand for energy resources in the country. Last week, Toronto-listed Husky Energy Inc. said it is exploring a potential secondary listing of its shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange, home to the world's busiest IPO market last year and a market that is increasingly attracting companies outside the region.

Sunshine Oilsands, which was incorporated in early 2007 and isn't expected to produce any oil until next year, owns and controls 4,600 square kilometers of oil-sand leases in the Athabasca sands region in the Canadian province of Alberta.

The Athabasca region holds an estimated 170 billion barrels of a type of heavy crude oil that requires heat, steam or chemicals to extract it from sandy deposits. The oil sands make Canada the holder of the world's third-largest oil reserves, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

One risk facing Sunshine is a land conservation plan unveiled by the Alberta government earlier this year that would expropriate a large section of the company's prospective oil sands land in order to preserve it as a caribou habitat. The conservation plan hasn't been finalized, and Sunshine is negotiating with the government over the scope of the conservation plan as well as potential compensation for seized land.

A Sunshine Oilsands executive wasn't immediately available for comment.

According to Sunshine's 2010 financial statement, the company lost 9.1 million Canadian dollars (US $9.2 million) last year, before accounting for future income-tax credits, and has a deficit of C$17.8 million.

China, the world's second-largest oil consumer after the U.S., has been investing aggressively in Canada's energy sector to fuel its rapidly growing economy. Chinese investment in oil sands has jumped as crude prices surged over the past year amid the global economic recovery, with prices now hovering near US $100.

Last year, state-owned Corp. bought a 9% stake in Syncrude, Canada's largest oil-sands project, for US $4.65 billion. In 2009, Co. purchased a stake in an Athabasca Oil Sands Corp. project for C$1.9 billion.

Sunshine Oilsands in March said it had raised C$230 million through investments from China Life Insurance (Overseas) Company Ltd., Bank of China Group Investment Ltd., Cross-Strait Common Development Fund Co., and several other investors.

Copyright (c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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Zipcar Prices Its IPO At $18, Above The Expected Range

Zipcar Prices Its IPO At $18, Above The Expected Range



Apr 14, 2011

Zipcar (NASDAQ:ZIP) priced its IPO at $18, above the expected range of $14-$16 per share. The Cambridge, Massachusetts based company sold about 9.68 million shares, giving the company a value of approximately $175 million.

Zipcar offers self-service vehicles for use by the hour or by the day. It is a membership-based company and claims over 560,000 members, which the company refers to as "Zipsters."

Zipcar offers more than 30 makes and models and has operations in New York, Chicago, London, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Toronto, Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle, Vancouver, Baltimore, Atlanta, Portland and Pittsburgh, as well as 230 colleges and universities serving a potential 1.7 million students.

Zipcar has 468 full-time employees and reportedly had 2010 revenue of $186.1 million, up 42% from 2009.

The company has an 80% market share in the U.S. and an approximately 50% market share worldwide, based on its total membership.

Zipcar will begin trading today on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker symbol "ZIP."