Market Insights

April was the busiest month for initial public offerings in over three years. A few high-profile names grabbed the headlines, but some other interesting stocks also appeared. Given that IPOs have been coming back to life, today we wanted to provide a quick review of recent transactions in case you missed some.

Let’s start with energy because it’s been the best-performing sector over the last two months. Two names pop up:

• Apergy Group (APY) provides drill bits, visualization software and services to oil and gas companies. It’s in the process of being spun off from industrial conglomerate Dover (DOV).
• Cactus (WHD): Its ticker is short for “wellhead,” and that pretty much sums up its business. It’s almost doubled since going public for $19 a share in February.

Technology, as usual, led the charge. Several have pulled back in the last week following initial rallies:

• Spotify (SPOT) was the largest and most hyped of the bunch. The streaming-music provider spiked on its April 3 debut, retreated and then ran to new highs by early May. But then earnings were only inline and it’s staggered lower since.
• Iqiyi (IQ): Believe it or not, this is the second most-valuable company to go public of late. It’s the online videogame division being spun off from Chinese Internet giant Baidu (BIDU), and is up more than 20 percent in the last month.
• Dropbox (DBX) and DocuSign (DOCU): Most people know these companies, which provide cloud-based data-hosting and document services. DBX is the bigger of the two and is already gaining traction with options traders, averaging more than 6,000 contracts per session. SmartSheet (SMAR) is a smaller fish in the same pond.
• Pivotal Software (PVTL) is another cloud-computing name that emerged from the data-center hub at EMC and VMware (VMW). It started trading about a month ago.
• Ceridian (CDAY) and Altair Engineering (ALTR) have online business software. CDAY services the human-resources segment and ALTR provides engineering products.

Finally, one that might have flown under the radar: GreenTree Hospitality (GHG), a Chinese-owned hospitality with yoga-embracing, eco-friendly image. It struggled to sell shares back in March but has exploded higher by 50 percent in May.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, and none of it should be viewed as a recommendation. We wanted to run down the larger and more active companies entering public markets in recent months.