Pandora Raises IPO- Click here http://bit.ly/imCdl8 for full article

Pandora Raises IPO- Click here http://bit.ly/imCdl8 for full article

The IPO market is booming for tech companies. Pandora, one of the leading Internet radio companies in the world is taking full advantage of current market conditions by raising their IPO target price range from $7 to $9 per share to a target price range of $10 to $12 per share. That such a high-profile company in the tech world should be raising its initial public offering price is a sign that it is a good time for other tech companies to go public, as well.

The announcement about Pandora’s IPO price range came on Friday June 10. In the same announcement, Pandora declared they expect to raise as much as $200 million when the company goes public. More the 16 million shares will be offered according to the public documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Although Pandora has a 50 percent of the market among the top 20 Internet radio stations, the company has yet to turn a profit.

Pandora’s initial filing to become a publicly-owned corporation came last February. At that time, the company only expected to bring in $100 million from the IPO. On June 2, the company raised its target price range to $7 to $9 per share, which put their expected initial offering at an estimated $142 million.

Pandora’s IPO is being underwritten by all the heavy hitters. Among the underwriters are Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase. The underwriters would not allow the increase unless they held a strong belief that demand would be strong to buy up the shares.

It was only last month when two of Pandora’s IPO underwriters were heavily criticized for their IPO pricing strategy for another technology company. At that time, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase set the IPO of LinkedIn at $45 per share. When trading opened on the market, share prices went quickly to $90, causing a heavy initial loss for LinkedIn.

The criticism from the LinkedIn IPO accounts for the timely increases of the Pandora IPO, as the underwriters do want to draw the same criticism.

Pandora, based in Oakland, California, is rapidly growing. Their growth averages about one new user per second. Last February, the company had 80 million users, and in April, that number rose to 90 million. Pandora was founded in 2000 under the name Music Genome Project.

With the major underwriters paying close attention to their tech companies, and raising IPOs accordingly, any other tech company can benefit from the current atmosphere by going public now instead of waiting for later, when it may cool.