(Reuters) – German chemicals firm Evonik is pressing ahead with plans to list in Frankfurt, despite the euro zone debt crises and the debacle over Facebook’s market debut, in what could be Europe’s largest initial public offering in more than a year.

Sources close to the matter have told Reuters Evonik could seek to raise as much as 5 billion euros ($6.3 billion) for owners the RAG foundation and private equity firm CVC, which would be the biggest IPO in Europe since commodities trader Glencore’s $10 billion flotation in May 2011.

The flotation, which the sources said could take place on June 25, is an audacious move, with new Greek elections slated for June 17 raising questions about the country’s future within the euro, and the stability of the whole currency bloc.

RAG, a state-owned trust that will bear the liabilities of Germany’s wound-down coal mines, had earlier this week signalled a possible delay of the IPO due to market turmoil.

Europe has seen little significant IPO activity since the middle of last year. While the IPOs of Ziggo and DKSH found strong support in March, the jury is still out on whether others such as Rheinmetall’s auto parts unit and German insurer Talanx will go public this year as planned.

On Thursday, Georgia postponed a planned London IPO of its state railways monopoly due to volatile markets, and a plunge in the value of Facebook shares following its New York debut last week has not helped investor confidence.

“The market environment for deals has become more difficult and volatile, but deals are still possible for quality companies,” said Stefan Weiner, a capital markets banker at J.P. Morgan.

RAG and CVC said on Friday the first day of trading for Evonik, which makes battery chemicals, animal feed additives, acrylic glass and superabsorbents for diapers, was expected to be before “the summer break,” without giving further details.

Sources close to the deal said an offer price range could be published around June 10 and the owners were aiming for Evonik to join Germany’s blue-chip index DAX in the long term.

RAG owns 75 percent of Evonik while CVC owns 25 percent.

The owners said, however, that CVC would receive one third of the proceeds from the float with RAG taking the rest. CVC’s stake in the group will therefore decline somewhat relative to RAG’s. The IPO will not include any newly issued shares.

“The company is extremely well prepared for the planned stock exchange listing,” RAG head Wilhelm Bonse-Geuking said.

Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs will be joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners for the offering. BofA Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse and J.P. Morgan are mandated as additional joint bookrunners. The IPO advisor for RAG-Stiftung, CVC and Evonik is Lilja & Co.

The RAG foundation said as early as April last year it was preparing for an IPO but put the plans on ice in September in view of weak financial markets prevailing at that time.

Sources close to the matter have told Reuters the firm aimed to raise up to 5 billion euros, based on a price tag for the entire chemicals group of at least 15 billion euros, after subtracting 1 billion in net debt.

That price assumed a multiple of at least 6.5 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, which before special items was 2.7 billion euros in the 12 months through March.

An IPO discount of at least 10 percent to account for the large number of shares being issued will also have to be included in the calculation. (By Ludwig Burger and Matthias Inverardi)

(Reuters) – Private equity firm CVC Capital Partners will cut its ownership stake to about 30 percent in the Formula One motor racing business after the company’s up to $3 billion IPO by selling shares on the public market, sources said on Thursday.

CVC currently holds about 42 percent of Formula One after it recently sold a $1.6 billion stake to a group of investors, including the investment management firm BlackRock.

That sale was key to set a benchmark valuation of Formula One for CVC and current shareholders, including billionaire F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone, the estate of bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers and JPMorgan.

Formula One will seek a valuation of about 18-22 times its earnings for the IPO, sources with direct knowledge of the plans told Reuters.

Reuters – Intelsat Global Holdings S.A., the world’s biggest operator of satellite services, filed with U.S. regulators on Friday to raise up to $1.75 billion in an initial public offering of its common stock.

The company filed for its IPO on a day Facebook Inc’s eagerly awaited debut fell short of expectations.

Technology stocks have had a good run in an otherwise lackluster IPO market, and companies such as Audience Inc and Millennial Media Inc have benefited from the market’s soft spot on their debut.

Payday lender Community Choice Financial Inc and energy company New Source Energy Corp pulled their prospective offerings over the past two weeks as market conditions remained unpromising.

Luxembourg-based Intelsat told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a preliminary prospectus that Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley were underwriting the IPO.

Intelsat posted net loss of $400 million on revenue of $2.6 billion for the year ended December 31, according to the regulatory filing.

The company, which had operated as an intergovernmental organization for more than 30 years, became a private company in 2001.

Intelsat, which transmitted television images of Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon, was in 2008 bought by Serafina Acquisition Ltd, which is backed by private equity firm Silver Lake among other funds.

Intelsat, which assumed debt of about $3.7 billion after the leveraged buyout (LBO), said it may use part of the proceeds from the offering to redeem and repay debt.

The company’s revenue has been relatively flat and the offering seems to be a way to pay back debt, said Francis Gaskins, a partner at IPOdesktop.com.

In February, debt-laden casino operator Caesars Entertainment Corp went public, to make up some of the losses made by its private equity owners after its 2008 LBO.

LBOs, in which the acquisition is financed with a large amount of debt, have been criticized for saddling the companies with debt and leaving them with little options to pay them back.

Gaskins said the Intelsat offering was not “particularly exciting”.

The filing did not reveal how many shares the company planned to sell or their expected price.

The company, which will change its name to Intelsat S.A before it goes public, intends to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “I”.

The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

(Reporting by Sharanya Hrishikesh in Bangalore, additional reporting by Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila, Maju Samuel)

Reuters – Motor racing business Formula One will start pre-marketing for its up to $3 billion Singapore initial public offering on May 22 after receiving approval from the city’s stock exchange for the deal, sources with direct knowledge of the plans said on Monday.

The company is seeking to raise at least $2.5 billion, vying to rank among the top IPOs in the world this year after Facebook Inc raised as much as $18.4 billion and a planned $3 billion listing by Malaysia’s Felda Global Ventures Holding.

The IPO is set to be priced before the end of June after the company and its bankers meet with investors and fund managers to gauge demand for the IPO, the sources said, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Formula One would join British luxury jeweler Graff Diamonds in braving equity markets despite a slump in global stocks. Graff started taking orders on Monday from institutional investors for its up to $1 billion Hong Kong IPO.

IPOs had their worst start in about for years in the Asia-Pacific region with overall equity market activity down about a fifth from 2011 as investors fretted at buying new shares because of falling markets.

MSCI’s index for Asia ex-Japan fell about 10.4 percent over the past month on concerns over slower growth in China and the fallout from Europe’s debt crisis. A source close to the Formula One deal said on May 12 the IPO could be delayed because of the ongoing market jitters.

Formula One could have its B+ long-term debt ratings lifted one notch after the IPO because of an expected improvement in its debt profile, Standard & Poor’s said in a May 15 report when it put the company on “positive” watch.

The decision “mainly reflects our view that after the IPO in the next two to three years, Formula One’s adjusted leverage is likely to lessen significantly and durably and that private equity sponsors will exit Formula One’s capital in the medium term,” S&P said in the report.

Formula One’s IPO approval by the Singapore exchange was reported earlier by Bloomberg.

Formula One, which holds 20 races around the world and has a more than 500 million television viewers, is controlled by private equity firm CVC Capital Partners, with a 63.4 percent stake.

CVC plans to reduce its stake as part of the IPO along with other shareholders in Formula One, the source added.

Formula One earlier this month unveiled a $1.8 billion refinancing package to help lay the groundwork for the IPO.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS were hired to lead the IPO. Spain’s Banco Santander , Singapore’s DBS Group and Malaysia’s CIMB will also act as joint bookrunners on the deal.

(Reuters) – Outback Steakhouse operator Bloomin’ Brands filed with regulators to increase the size of its planned initial public offering to up to $345 million and named five more underwriters.

The company, which filed a preliminary prospectus indicating an IPO of up to $300 million last month, said it intends to list its common stock on the Nasdaq under the symbol “BLMN.”

Bloomin’ Brands, which is 66 percent owned by private equity group Bain Capital, had earlier indicated that it planned to list under the symbol “BLM” but had not revealed the exchange.

The amount a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filing is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

Bloomin’ Brands owns and operates 1,247 restaurants and has 195 restaurants operating under franchise or joint venture arrangements across 49 U.S. states and 21 countries and territories.

The Tampa, Florida-based casual dining chain – which also operates Carrabba’s Italian Grill, Bonefish Grill, Roy’s, and Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar – also added Jefferies & Co as co-lead manager to the offering.

The filing also listed William Blair, Raymond James, Wells Fargo and the Williams Capital Group as co-managers for the IPO.

For the quarter ended March 31, the company reported a net income of $50 million on revenue of $1.1 billion.

The filing did not reveal how many shares the company planned to sell or their expected price.

(Reuters) – Facebook Inc will increase the size of its initial public offering by 25 percent, a source familiar with the matter said, and could raise as much as $16 billion as strong investor demand for a share of the No.1 social network trumps debate about the company’s long-term potential to make money.

Those concerns over revenue growth were underscored earlier on Tuesday, when General Motors said it planned to pull out of advertising on Facebook.

Facebook, founded eight years ago by Mark Zuckerberg in a Harvard dorm room, will add about 85 million shares to its IPO, floating about 422 million shares in an offering expected on Friday, the source told Reuters, declining to be identified because the information was confidential.

The expanded size, coupled with Facebook’s recently announced plans to raise the IPO price range, would make Facebook the third-largest initial share sale in U.S. history after Visa Inc and GM. Facebook declined to comment on the increased IPO size, which was first reported by CNBC on Tuesday.

The social networking company is drumming up massive demand for the offering even as slowing revenue and user growth spur questions about the long-term Facebook story.

“This is much more a spectacle, a media event and a cultural moment than it is an IPO,” said Max Wolff, an analyst at GreenCrest Capital. “This is not a game of models and fundamentals at this point.”

GM’s announcement, while ill-timed, should not seriously hurt Facebook’s IPO reception for now as it may not be representative of advertisers’ overall attitude, said Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research Group. “The demand for the IPO probably won’t be affected materially by this,” he said, noting, however, there were probably a lot of calls between underwriters and investors following GM’s announcement.

The IPO, Silicon Valley’s largest, eclipses the roughly $2 billion debut by Google Inc in 2004.

Facebook raised the target price range to $34-$38 per share in response to strong demand, from $28-$35, according to a Tuesday filing. That would value the company at $93-$104 billion, rivaling the market value of Internet powerhouses such as Amazon.com Inc, and exceeding that of Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc combined.

The increased price range made it very unlikely that Facebook shares would double on their trading debut as they might have if the company had come out at the low end of its initial price range, Wolff said. He expects a first-day gain of about 10 percent.

“No rational person thought they were buying the stock for $28,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Patcher, noting Facebook had traded as high as $44 in the secondary markets in recent months.

Facebook said in its latest filing that it arrived at the higher IPO price range after one week of marketing the offering – part of a cross-country roadshow in which CEO Zuckerberg has taken the stage to lay out his vision for the company’s money-making potential and its top priorities.

The price range hike, coupled with strong results from Internet and social media players Groupon Inc and China’s Renren Inc, contributed to a dotcom rally on Wall Street on Tuesday. Shares of Pandora Media Inc rose 10.3 percent, Zynga Inc was up 7.7 percent, Groupon climbed 3.7 percent and Renren gained 6.4 percent.

LONG-TERM GROWTH

Before the IPO size was increased, Facebook would have raised about $12.1 billion based on the midpoint price of $36 and the 337.4 million shares on offer originally.

At this midpoint, Facebook would be valued at roughly 27 times its 2011 revenue, or 99 times earnings. Google went public at a valuation of $23 billion, or 16 times its trailing revenue and 218 times earnings. Apple Inc went public in 1980 at a valuation of 25 times its revenue and 102 times earnings.

Facebook’s IPO comes as some investors worry the company has not yet figured out a way to make money from a growing number of users who access the social network on mobile devices such as smartphones. Meanwhile, revenue growth from Facebook’s online advertising business, which accounts for the bulk of its revenue, has slowed in recent months.

With some 900 million users, it had $1 billion in net income on revenue of $3.7 billion in 2011.

The company has also extended the time frame for its $1 billion acquisition of mobile app maker Instagram, projecting the deal would close this year instead of the second quarter as it previously indicated.

It provided no reasons, though a source familiar with the matter told Reuters last week that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has reached out to Google and Twitter as part of the agency’s standard review for deals of that size.

Facebook is scheduled to price its shares on Thursday and begin trading on the Nasdaq on Friday. A host of Wall Street banks are underwriting the offering, with Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs serving as leads.

(Additional reporting by Tanya Agrawal; Editing by Edwin Chan, Maureen Bavdek, Matthew Lewis, Richard Chang, Ryan Woo and Ian Geoghegan)

PRESS RELEASE

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, a leading National Security Solutions provider, announced today that it has completed its previously announced public offering of Kratos common stock, raising $100 million in gross proceeds at $5.00 per share. Kratos also announced that the Kratos common stock portion of the Composite Engineering, Inc. (CEI) acquisition consideration of $20 million will also be valued at $5.00 per Kratos share, consistent with the offering price of the just closed public offering.

The Company expects to use the net proceeds from this offering to fund a portion of the cash consideration payable to the stockholders of Composite Engineering, Inc. (CEI) in connection with the proposed acquisition of CEI. To the extent that the net proceeds are not applied to the CEI acquisition, the Company intends to use them for general corporate purposes.

Eric DeMarco, Kratos’ President and CEO, said, “Today we announced the completion of a public offering of Kratos’ common stock, with a significant amount of the newly issued shares being placed with existing long term Kratos shareholders. A linchpin to the successful execution of this transaction was Oak Investment Partners’ $55 million investment, and I want to personally thank fellow member of the Kratos Board of Directors and Oak Managing Partner, Bandel Carano, for his confidence in Kratos’ strategic business plan and our management team.” Mr. DeMarco continued, “With the closing of this equity raise, and the expected closing of the pending acquisition of CEI in the third quarter, we will have acquired a very unique and rare business in the growing Aerial Targets and Unmanned Aerial Drone market place, and we will have positioned Kratos for accelerated delevering going forward and increased Kratos’ expected Free Cash Flow generation for the future.”

About Kratos Defense & Security Solutions

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. /quotes/zigman/114317/quotes/nls/ktos KTOS -0.81% is a specialized National Security technology business providing mission critical products, services and solutions for United States National Security priorities. Kratos’ core capabilities are sophisticated engineering, manufacturing and system integration offerings for National Security platforms and programs. Kratos’ areas of expertise include Command, Control, Communications, Computing, Combat Systems, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C5ISR), satellite communication systems, unmanned systems, cyber warfare, cybersecurity, information assurance, critical infrastructure security and weapons systems sustainment. Kratos has primarily an engineering and technical oriented work force of approximately 4,100, many of whom hold an active National Security clearance, including Secret, Top Secret and higher. The vast majority of Kratos’ work is performed on a military base, in a secure facility or at a critical infrastructure location. Kratos’ primary end customers are United States Federal Government agencies, including the Department of Defense, classified agencies, intelligence agencies and Homeland Security related agencies.

The Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=3519

Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release may constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements relate to a variety of matters, including, without limitation, the Company’s expectations regarding the closing of the pending acquisition of CEI, synergies, cost savings and financial results expected to be realized following the closing of the acquisition and other statements that are not purely statements of historical fact. These forward-looking statements are made on the basis of the current beliefs, expectations and assumptions of the management of Kratos and are subject to significant risks and uncertainty. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements. All such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise these statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained herein include, but are not limited to: any operational or cultural difficulties associated with the integration of the businesses of Kratos and CEI; potential adverse reactions or changes to business relationships resulting from the acquisition; unexpected costs, charges or expenses resulting from the acquisition; litigation or adverse judgments relating to the acquisition; the failure to realize synergies and cost savings from the transaction or delay in realization thereof; and any changes in general economic and/or industry-specific conditions. In addition, the pending acquisition of CEI may not be completed at all or may not be completed on time. For a further discussion of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those expressed in these forward-looking statements, as well as risks relating to the business of Kratos in general, see the risk disclosures in the Annual Report on Form 10-K of Kratos for the year ended December 25, 2011, and in subsequent reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K and other filings made with the SEC by Kratos.

SOURCE: Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc.

(Reuters) – Facebook Inc. has increased the price range in Silicon Valley’s biggest-ever initial public offering to raise more than $12 billion, giving the No.1 social network a valuation potentially exceeding $100 billion.

The company founded in a Harvard dorm room by Mark Zuckerberg raised the price target range to between $34 and $38 per share in response to strong demand, from $28 to $35, the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday.

That would value Facebook at roughly $93 billion to $104 billion, rivaling the market capitalization of Internet powerhouses like Amazon.com Inc and exceeding that of Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc combined.

At the mid-point of $36, Facebook would raise $12.1 billion, eclipsing Google Inc’s debut in 2004.

Wall Street had expected the company to increase the price range, with investors keen to get a slice of a strong consumer brand. The IPO roadshow began last week and has drawn crowds of investors from coast to coast.

Facebook plans to close the books on its IPO later on Tuesday, two days ahead of schedule, and in a signal that the landmark initial share sale is drumming up strong demand, a source familiar with the deal told Reuters on Monday.

The social network is scheduled to price its shares on Thursday and begin trading on Friday.

The IPO is already “well oversubscribed,” which is why the company is closing its books earlier than anticipated, the source said.

WHAT NEXT?

Facebook plans to sell 337.4 million shares, or 12.3 percent of the company. The capital-raising target far outstrips other big Internet IPOs. Google raised just shy of $2 billion in 2004, while last year Groupon Inc tapped investors for $700 million and Zynga Inc raked in $1 billion.

The higher price range marks an increase of 21 percent on the lower end.

The IPO comes amid concerns from some investors that Facebook hasn’t yet figured out a way to make money from an increasing number of users who access the social network on mobile devices such as smartphones.

Company executives met with prospective investors in Chicago on Monday and are slated to travel to Kansas City and Denver, before returning to Menlo Park, California, where Facebook is headquartered.

A host of Wall Street banks are underwriting Facebook’s offering, with Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs serving as leads. Facebook will trade on Nasdaq under the symbol FB.

(Reporting By Olivia Oran and Tanya Agrawal; Editing by Edwin Chan, Bernard Orr, Ryan Woo and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Reuters – Online stock photography provider Shutterstock plans an initial public offering of common stock to raise up to $115 million.

Sources told Reuters earlier this month that Shutterstock, which competes with stock photo leader Getty Images, is close to filing for an IPO.

It owns a library of photographs and illustrations that customers can license and download through subscription deals.

Shutterstock is backed by entities affiliated with Insight Venture Partners and Pixel Holdings Inc. Shutterstock Chief Executive Jonathan Oringer is the sole shareholder of Pixel Holdings Inc, according to a regulatory filing with U.S. regulators on Monday.

Oringer — who hails from Westchester, New York — founded the company in 2003, uploading 30,000 stock photos to the site. The site currently has more than 19 million images.

It competes with other online marketplaces for imagery like iStockphoto, Fotolia and Dreamstime and traditional stock content providers such as Corbis Corp.

Getty Images was taken private by Hellman & Friedman for $2.4 billion in 2008.

For the year ended 2011, Shutterstock earned 21.8 million on a revenue of $120.2 million. More than 550,000 active, paying users contributed to revenue in 2011, representing an increase of 71 percent compared to the prior year.

The New York-based company told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a preliminary prospectus that Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank Securities and Jefferies were underwriting the IPO.

The filing did not reveal how many shares the company planned to sell or their expected price.

The company intends to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SSTK”.

The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

(Reporting by Tanya Agrawal and Vidya P L Nathan in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das)

Reuters – China Yongda Automobiles Services has launched its Hong Kong initial public offering, aiming to raise as much as HK$3.37 billion ($434 million), IFR, a Thomson Reuters publication reported on Monday.

The Shanghai-based car dealership operator is making available 312.2 million shares, or about 20 percent of its enlarged share capital, at an indicative price range of HK$7.60-HK$10.80 each, the report said.

The price range represents a 2012 P/E ratio of 8.1-11.5, IFR reported, adding that the deal had attracted two cornerstone investors. Baring Private Equity is investing as much as $120 million in offering and Oman Investment Fund will buy $30 million.