Blackstone Group LP’s Pinnacle Foods Inc., the maker of Hungry-Man frozen dinners and Birds Eye frozen vegetables, raised $580 million in an IPO yesterday.
Other buyout firms are also looking to sell investments as they seek to raise new funds. Warburg Pincus LLC’s Bausch & Lomb and Madison Dearborn Partners LLC’s CDW Corp. both filed to go public last week, while Bain Capital LLC and TPG Capital’s Quintiles Transnational Holdings Inc. filed to raise $600 million in February.
Better Returns
“We have seen globally a resiliency to the equity markets,” said Paul Donahue, co-head of Americas equity capital markets at Morgan Stanley in New York. “IPOs are delivering returns to the buy side in excess of key relevant benchmarks like the S&P 500.”
IPOs worldwide posted average returns of 17 percent in the quarter, led by the U.S., with a 25 percent average return, data compiled by Bloomberg show. By comparison, the S&P 500 has gained 10 percent and the MSCI World has risen more than 6 percent.
There are more than $165 billion of IPOs in the pipeline globally, according to data from Ipreo, a New York-based provider of market information.
The pipeline of deals in Europe, the Middle East and Africa has risen more than fivefold since the end of last year to $34.2 billion, including an offering of shares in France Telecom SA and Deutsche Telekom AG’s Everything Everywhere Ltd., a company with an estimated value of $15.7 billion, the data show.
Four of the five largest IPOs this quarter came from Europe, including LEG Immobilien’s $1.6 billion initial offering in January and Esure Group Plc’s more than $914 million sale in London this month, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
“An improved macro environment and low volatility levels mean banks’ risk appetite to underwrite transactions is robust,” said Edward Sankey, global co-head of equity syndicate at Deutsche Bank AG.
Asia Slump