IMS shares rose to $22.90 in early trading, showing the market's ongoing thirst for health-tech related offerings. Castlight Health went public with a bang March 14, with its shares opening at $16 each and soaring to a closing price of $39.80 per share, up 148.75% for the day. Castlight shares were trading at $21 a share early Friday.
Investor site Seeking Alpha gave the IMS offering a positive rating. One analyst, John Schroer, a portfolio manager with Allianz Global Investors, said in a Wall Street Journal report that the company has a stable, profitable legacy business and plans to cross-sell additional products and value-added services to existing clients. Its future success will depend on how well it sustains that business model, he said.
IMS “has one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of healthcare information in the world, spanning sales, prescription and promotional data, medical claims, electronic medical records and social media,” explains Seeking Alpha. “IMS standardizes, organizes, structures and integrates this data by applying its sophisticated analytics and leveraging its global technology infrastructure to help its clients run their organizations more efficiently and make better decisions to improve their operational and financial performance.”
The company reported operating income of $276 million in the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2013, compared with $173 million in the same period in 2012. Revenue increased 4% in the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2013, to $1.87 billion. Revenue for the year reached $2.54 billion with net income hitting $82 million.
TPG Capital Management, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Leonard Green & Partners took IMS private in 2010 for $5.2 billion, including assumption of company debt.
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