Before Facebook’s wildly sought-after initial public offering on Friday made it the nation’s most valuable U.S. company to go public, at $104 billion, UPS held that historic spot.
UPS’ 1999 public offering effectively valued the Sandy Springs company at $80 billion by the end of the day — the nation’s loftiest valuation of a newly public company until Facebook came along.
But as UPS’ stock performance over the past dozen years shows, such deals can have a mixed record.
An investor who bought 100 shares of UPS at its initial $50 offering price saw the value of his or her $5,000 investment zoom to $7,350 in the first two days.
But he or she would have seen relatively modest gains over the next 12 years by keeping those shares. The total return on that initial investment, assuming dividends were reinvested, has been about 94 percent, or 5.4 percent a year, according to Bloomberg. The original investment would be worth about $9,695 now.
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