Ivanhoe Electric shares fall in debut after $169 million IPO

The exploration and development company, which owns properties in Arizona, Utah and Montana, along with a battery storage business, sold on Monday almost 14.4 million shares for $11.75 each, slightly short of the $12.5 each it aimed for.

The transaction, however, was still the biggest US IPO since May 12, when oilfield services company ProFrac Holding Corp. raised $328 million, including so-called greenshoe shares.

Only $4.9 billion has been raised on US exchanges this year, compared with almost $102 billion during the first six months of 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Analysts had predicted a better market debut as Ivanhoe Electric is focused on critical minerals that are key to the global energy transition.

“We believe the United States is significantly underexplored and will yield major new discoveries of these metals,” Ivanhoe Electric said in a regulatory filing. “Our mineral projects focus on copper, gold, silver, nickel, cobalt, vanadium and the platinum group metals.”

Shares in the company, which spent $39 million on exploration last year and posted a $59 million loss, were trading last in New York (NYSEAMERICAN: IE) at $10.42 or 11.32% lower than their sale price.

Ivanhoe Electric owns the Santa Cruz copper project in Arizona, which it says is the second largest copper deposit in the US.

It also holds rights to the Tintic gold-copper mine in Utah and the Hog Heaven silver-gold-copper project in Montana.

Ivanhoe Electric plans to use part of the proceeds from the IPO to fund the construction and deployment of its Typhoon electrical pulse-powered geophysical surveying transmitter technology.

Friedland made his fortune from the Voisey’s Bay nickel project in Canada in the 1990s. Since then, he has been involved in some of the biggest mineral discoveries in the world, including the giant Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia and the Kamoa-Kakula copper mine in Democratic Republic of Congo.

Forbes estimates Friedland’s holdings are worth more than $2 billion.