Smart Technologies Inc., a Canadian maker of whiteboards, has erased almost half its shareholder value in the four short months since the company's initial public offering.
That makes Athabasca Oil Sands Corp., previously the leading nominee in the race for bad performance in a big name IPO, suddenly look pretty good.
Shares of Smart fell big-time Wednesday after the company gave 2011 guidance that the market didn't like much at all. That left the stock down about 47 per cent from its initial public offering price of $17 (U.S.). (Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and RBC Dominion Securities led that deal.)
Athabasca is down only about 37 per cent, by comparison, and it's been public longer. It's been seven months since the oil sands development company went public in an IPO led by GMP Securities and Morgan Stanley.
The solid gains of equity markets in 2010 makes those performances all the more striking.
What's the outlook for Smart? RBC Dominion Securities analyst Mike Abramsky cut his rating to "sector perform" from "outperform," and said the stock could be at $12 in 12 months, a big drop from his previous target of $17.
Getting back to $12 would be a significant gain from here for Smart, but that won't be much solace for those who bought it as recently as Tuesday, when it was trading for about $13.