Wednesday June 23 1:04 AM ET
Waterhouse Boosts IPO Size To $1 Bln - Sources
NEW YORK (Reuters) - TD Waterhouse Group Inc., a discount brokerage,
Tuesday increased the size for its stock offering by 31 percent to $1 billion,
indicating that investor demand for online brokerage shares is still high, according to
people close to the deal.
TD Waterhouse, a unit of Canada's Toronto-Dominion Bank (NYSE:TD - news), is selling 42 million
shares at $24 apiece. The offering of a 11.2 percent stake in the firm values TD Waterhouse at $9
billion. The New York-based company earlier this month said it would sell 32 million shares, or a 8.7
percent stake in the firm, for $20 to $24 apiece.
Online brokerage stocks in recent months have declined, in part because of worries that the industry
could not keep up its phenomenal growth rate in trading activity and adding new accounts. The
stocks, which had lost more than half of their value, recently rebounded but most are still down
around 40 percent from their April highs.
Investors, however, still have an appetite for online brokers and ordered ''significantly'' more
Waterhouse shares than are available, people close to the deal said Tuesday.
Analyst Randall Roth of Renaissance Capital's IPO fund said he expected the shares to start trading
Wednesday at a ''healthy'' premium to the initial offering price.
TD Waterhouse operates the third-largest U.S. Internet brokerage, Waterhouse Investor Services,
which processed 58,000 trades a day in the first quarter. But the company, which owns the Canadian
discount brokerage Green Line Investor Services, also has 210 brick-and-mortar branches in the U.S.,
Canada, Australia, Britain and Hong Kong and employs 5,300.
The company, which ranks second to U.S. discount brokerage Charles Schwab Corp. (NYSE:SCH -
news), has 2.6 million accounts, of which 1.9 million are active, with assets of $106 billion. By
comparison, Schwab has 6.1 million accounts with $561 billion in assets and operates 304 branch
offices. Toronto-Dominon bought Waterhouse three years ago for $525 million in cash and stock and
has since made a string of smaller brokerage acquisitions. TD Waterhouse bought Kennedy Cabot &
CO. and Jack White & Co in its 1998 fiscal year ended Oct. 31, adding 332,000 accounts. |
