What are some of the companies that had their IPO in 1996? The pinnacle of high finance is reached with initial public offerings. Investors compete for shares when a well-known, originally private corporation goes public. They are already familiar with the company’s performance, revenue history, and expectations. The only factor left to chance in many instances is how much greater the share price will move once trading starts.
It’s difficult to predict what the stock market will do in the short term. However, it is easy to find out what the stock market did yesterday, last month, and last quarter. This article takes a look at companies that had their IPO in 1996. There are plenty of resources on the internet that you can use to find more information on most stocks discussed here in this article, including company websites and investor relations websites as well as financial news websites.
10 Companies That Went To Their IPO In 1996
The IPO market may be dead, but we can’t forget the companies that came before it. In 1996, we saw a boom of companies going public in the technology sector and beyond. Here are the ten that went public in 1996:
1. Aastra Technologies Limited
Aastra produced devices and systems for connecting to network technologies, along with the Internet, and had its previous headquarters in Concord, Ontario, Canada. Its offerings included screen phones, Enterprise private branch exchanges (PBX), internet connectivity terminals, home and commercial telephone connectors, and high-quality streaming video transponders, decoders, and gateways. Residential telephone equipment was offered for sale in the US under the Bell brand by the Southern New England Telecommunications-affiliated Sonecor brand.
On November 11, 2013, Mitel Networks Corporation revealed that it would buy Aastra Technologies Ltd. for $400 million in cash and equity. Aastra technologies is listed as an IPO traded business in Canada in 1996.
2. Alexion Pharmaceuticals
Located in Boston, Massachusetts, Alexion Pharmaceuticals is an American pharmaceutical firm that focuses on orphan pharmaceuticals to cure rare diseases. Being one of its kind the company had a huge social responsibility. In 2021, it joined AstraZeneca as a franchise. In 1996, it will become public.
3. Ansys
American firm Ansys, Inc. has its headquarters in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. It creates and sells CAE/multiphysics engineering simulation tools and makes its goods and services available to clients all over the world.
John Swanson started Ansys in 1970. In 1993, he sold his ownership stake to venture financiers. In 1996, Ansys went public on the NASDAQ. The business purchased many other engineering design firms in the 2000s, gaining access to more fluid mechanics, electronics layout, and physics assessment of data. On December 23, 2019, Ansys joined as a contributor to the NASDAQ-100 index.
4. Aware, Inc.
Aware was initially a “mathematical engineering business” in 1986 when it came into being in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company decided to go public in 1996 to market its DSL products and intellectual property. At the time, the company was also a well-established supplier of biometrics technology for use by law enforcement. Aware sold various resources unconnected to its present operations between 2009 and 2012.
In 2019, Aware will only offer software and services related to biometrics. Its products use speaker recognition, iris recognition, face recognition, fingerprint recognition, and facial recognition for biometric identity and multi-factor authentication.
5. Imperial Brands
Bristol, England is home to the British multinational tobacco firm Imperial Brands plc, originally known as Imperial Tobacco Group plc. After Philip Morris Multinational, British American Tobacco, and Japan Tobacco in terms of global market share, it is the fourth-largest global cigarette firm in the world. It is also the largest manufacturer of fine-cut tobacco and tobacco sheets in the world.
Imperial Brands is a member of the FTSE 100 Index and is a company with a London Stock Exchange listing and initial public offering in 1996. As of 4 June 2019, it ranked 28th among all companies having a principal listing on the London Stock Exchange in terms of market capitalization, with a value of about £18.5 billion. There is no connection between Imperial Brands and Imperial Tobacco Canada, the British American Tobacco affiliate in Canada.
6. Bank Negara Indonesia
An Indonesian state-owned bank known as PT Bank Negara Indonesia (Persero) Tbk or Bank Negara Indonesia (State Bank of Indonesia). In addition to London, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, and New York, it has branches mainly in Indonesia.
In 2006, it had 1000 branches and more than 9 million clients. It trades under the ticker “BBNI” on the Indonesia Stock Exchange. As of March 12th, 2007, it had a market value of 23.8 trillion rupiahs, or roughly US$2.6 billion. In terms of financial assets, it is Indonesia’s fourth-largest bank. In 1996, Bank Negara Indonesia decided to go public, and as a result, its shares underwent an initial public offering (IPO) on the stock exchange.
7. SS&C Technologies
The goal of SS&C Technologies’ acquisition strategy was to expand the company’s expertise and product offerings. SS&C has undertaken 47 acquisitions between 1986 and 2017. The purchase of Advent Software, a rival in the financial services industry for an approximate $2.7 billion, was the world’s biggest transaction made by SS&C at that point. Software used by 4,300 investment money managers, mainly hedge fund managers and family offices, has been added to SS&C.
In 1996, the company had an initial public offering for the first time. In a leveraged buy-out, it was turned personal, and after a number of years as a private firm, it was reintroduced to the public in a second IPO.
8. Alere
Alere Inc. produced quick point-of-care diagnostic assets globally. The business was based in Waltham, Massachusetts, and was established in 1991. The corporation had an asset value of $5.9 billion and a market capitalization of $3.47 billion as of January 2017. Inverness Medical Innovations, Inc. was the company’s previous name until it converted to Alere Inc. in 2010. In 1996, Alere decided to go public.
9. Sykes Enterprises
John H. Sykes established Sykes in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1977 to offer large enterprises engineering and design solutions. One of Sykes’ earliest clients was IBM, followed by AT&T and Texas Instruments. The business had 20 locations, 1,000 employees, and $55 million in annual revenue by 1990.
By acquiring Sterling, Colorado-based Jones Technologies, a call center company, the company commenced the customer service sector in 1992. The corporate offices of Sykes moved from Charlotte to Tampa, Florida, in 1993. In 1996, Sykes became a publicly traded firm. The corporation had a NASDAQ listing and its shares had the ticker symbol SYKE.
10. Hub Group
In North America, the Hub Group is a transportation management organization that offers truck brokerage, intermodal, and logistics solutions. The company, which is publicly owned and has annual sales of approximately $3.5 billion, owns two subsidiary companies: Mode Transit (formerly Exel Transportation Services), which specializes in third-party logistics, and Hub Group Transport, which offers intermodal freight transport and drayage services.
Phillip Yeager created Hub Group in 1971. The business went public in 1996 and is currently trading on the NASDAQ market. David Yeager, the son of Phillip Yeager, is the chairman and CEO of Hub Group. The business’s main office is in Oak Brook, Illinois.
Final Words
Now that the work of finding these companies is out of the way, we can look at some statistics about those first-time public companies in 1996. Interestingly, one of the most pervasive features of those 1996 IPOs was that most were older companies. Only 16 had gone public after 1995, and none were younger than a year old at the time of their IPO. That’s because investors are still quite wary of new companies with few or nonexistent track records, history shows.
