49 initial public offerings have been priced so far this year as of Mar 24, 2006:

- 33 IPOs are currently trading above initial offering price;
- and 16 are trading below the offering price.

Six IPO was priced during the week of March 20th, 2006. There are three deals scheduled to be priced during the coming week, hoping to raise nearly $600 million.

IPO PERFORMANCE

Canadian coffee and doughnut chain Tim Hortons Inc. (THI: chart) priced 29 million shares at $23.16 per share, near the high end of the forecast of $22 - $24. On Monday the company raised its original range of $18 - $20 per share. The offering was worth $671.7 million.

The shares in the IPO represent a 15% stake in the company, which will remain majority owned by U.S. fast food company Wendy's International (WEN: chart).

Goldman Sachs and RBC Capital Markets were the lead underwriters for the offering.

It is the second fast-food IPO spin-off of the year. McDonald's Corp. (MCD: chart) in January sold a stake in the Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG: chart).

The company’s stock closed at $28.16 on Friday, up 21.6% from the offering price

Nextest Systems Corp. (NEXT: chart) priced 5.4 million shares at $14 per share on Thuesday. This price came at the low end of the $14 - $16 forecast. The initial public offering was worth $75.6 million.

The company sold 4 million shares, with existing shareholders offering nearly 1.4 million.

In addition, the company and the selling stockholders have granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 810,000 additional shares to cover overallotments.

Merrill Lynch acted as a lead manager for the offering. Cowen & Co. and Needham & Company were the co-managers.

Nextest Systems Corporation is a leader in the design and manufacturing of ATE for Flash memory and System-On-Chip semiconductors.

Nextest is the second U.S. IPO in semiconductor industry in March. Rivel Eagle Test Systems Inc. (EGLT: chart) earlier sold $100.8 million in shares.

The company’s shares closed at $16.05 on Friday, up 14.6% from the initial offering price.

Financial services company Clayton Holdings Inc. (CLAY: chart) sold $127.5 million in stock through its initial public offering on Thursday.

The company priced 7.5 million shares at $17 per share, at the high end of the forecast of $15 - $17. The deal's size had been increased from a initial filing of 6.3 million shares.

William Blair and Piper Jaffray were the lead underwriters.

The company’s shares closed at $21 on Friday, up 17.6% from the offering price.

One of Argentina's fastest growing banks Banco Macro Bansud (BMA: chart) priced 9.7 million American depositary shares at $20.35 each. Each American depositary share represents 10 class B shares.

Of the total, 35.6 million Class B shares were offered by Banco Macro and 61.6 million were offered by selling shareholders.