Manchester United IPO - Did you buy?

[Rey C.]

I know there are a lot of European football fans on here. Have any of you bought into the Manchester United IPO that started trading today (symbol: MANU)? It priced at $14 and so far it's hanging onto that price.

I don't follow Euro football (or even American football, really), but I'm familiar with the team. And it looks like the owner (Glazer) had loaded the team up with debt and is just cashing out a decent sized chunk of profit. I guess this has some of the diehard fans pretty upset. But how many here have bought, or are considering buying into this stock offering?

Manchester United IPO Trades Flat

Shares of British soccer club Manchester United MANU 0.00% PLC didn't get much of a bounce as they started trading in the U.S. on Friday.

The company's stock opened at $14.05 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, less than 1% above its initial public offering price of $14. It sold 16.7 million shares at a price below its expected $16 to $20 range.

Manchester United, a 134-year-old club, carries a market capitalization of about $2.3 billion at its IPO price, which would make it one of the most valuable sports teams, eclipsing the $2.15 billion paid this year for the Los Angeles Dodgers. On an enterprise value basis, Manchester United team is worth $2.8 billion.

The role of the Glazers, which took on debt to purchase the team for $1.47 billion in 2005, stirred the ire of some among its fan base. Critics said the team's debt load restricted its ability to keep and attract top talent.

As of March 31, the company had total debt of £423.3 million, or about $663 million; it is using its IPO proceeds to help reduce that level. Half of the total IPO shares sold went into the pockets of the Glazer family, and half to the company.

 

[Rey C.]

Now it's down to $13.08.

Other than buying some shares in CART (MPH) years ago, and then eventually shorting it... I try to stay away from fan based companies. The people who bought into this MANU offering are now underwater, as are the ones who bought into the Williams GP offering. As much as I love F1, I still wouldn't buy into its coming offering for anything. Over the years I've just seen SO many motorsports related public offering struggle or fold up and die: CART, Dover Motorosports, Reynard, etc. They use the emotions of their fans to sucker them into letting the wealthy owners of these companies cash out at very high valuations (kinda like Facebook ).