After Busy January, IPO Market Continues to Hum

On the heels of one of its busiest Januarys in the last decade, the IPO market remains red-hot in February.

Two more companies have gone public this week. ExOne (NASDAQ: XONE), a 3-D printing company hoping to mimic the success of 3D Systems (NYSE: DDD), hit the market today at $18 a share. Boise Cascade (NYSE: BCC), a building materials distributor, went public yesterday, posting a return of 24.5% in its IPO.

Those two IPOs follow a January in which 12 companies went public. That was the highest January tally for the IPO market since 2006, and the second-highest total in the past decade.

It’s no wonder so many companies are going public. The fiscal cliff is gone, the broad market is close to all-time highs, and – most importantly – the IPO returns have been great.

Of the 13 companies that have gone public in 2013 prior to today’s ExOne IPO, the average return has been close to 15%. That’s almost five times the return of the S&P 500.

It’s also why more and more companies are lining up to go public. According to Renaissance Capital, no fewer than 10 IPOs are scheduled to debut in the coming weeks.

The IPO market isn’t slowing down. It appears February could be just as busy as January.