Zipcar, the world’s largest car share company was, this week, the darling of Wall St. ( well before the run last night!)
The car-sharing pioneer was ten times over subscribed with its initial public offering ‘sending the stock through the stratosphere in its Nasdaq debut. Priced at $18 (U.S.) a share – already well above the $14 to $16 that analysts had anticipated.’
The stock surged to $30 on its opening trade and quickly peaked at $31.50, before settling back to $28 at the close of its first day. After the run it dropped to just under $27.
Zipcar, like Cityhop, is a short-term car-rental business but unlike Cityhop, Zipcar, is a lot older (it’[s been around for 11 years) and has over 560,000 customer-members in 14 major cities (including Toronto and Vancouver) and more than 230 university campuses.
“It’s a cult IPO,” said Scott Sweet, senior managing partner at Florida-based IPO research firm IPO Boutique. “A cult IPO is one where people like it so much that they say, ‘I want it at any price.’”
IPO analyst Francis Gaskins of IPO Desktop said Zipcar has identified more than 100 major urban centres globally, as well as hundreds of campuses, as potential markets.
Car-sharing
Zipcar membership: more than 560,000
Number of vehicles in fleet: more than 8,000
Size of North American car-sharing market, 2009: $253-million (U.S.)
Size of European car-sharing market, 2009: €220-million ($313-million)
Forecast size of North American car-sharing market, 2016: $3.3-billion
Forecast size of European car-sharing market, 2016: €2.6-billion
Sources: The Globe & Mail, Zipcar Inc., Frost & Sullivan, Bloomberg
Tags: car share, cars by the hour., carshare, City hop, Cityhop, eco-friendly transport, sharing a car, Zipcar