In what will so far be the third largest Initial Public Offering of 2013, Quintiles is expected to seek $750M dollars in funding which should set it’s IPO price at around $40 per share. As I have blogged about for the past few months, Quintiles will only be issued shares reflecting about 15% of it’s total shares to the public. Roughly $500M of the IPO funds will go towards company expansion as well as paying ogg some debt, while the remaining $250 to $300M will go to founder Dennis Gillings and the four private equity firms that currently hold the majority of the ownership in the CRO giant. The majority of these shares will not be sold immediately by Gillings and the private equity firms, as they will continue to hold on to roughly 70% of the company even after the IPO. This valuation puts Quintiles at a market value of $4.9 billion. There is still no word on when the shares will actually begin trading, although we do know that they will trade under the “Q” symbol on the New York Stock Exchange and one can expect opening day to be in the early Fall of this year.

While this is certainly an exciting IPO in any industry (it is the third largest of this year), it is clear that investors and mutual funds will have no problems placing their funds into Q as it is already an established and mature company in what is still believed to be a “growth sector”. The fact of the matter remains that only 15% of the company will actually be available for public purchase, thus giving the four private equity firms a majority control in the fate of the company. While most of the IPO funds will be used for debt payback, there is some exciting potential that Quintiles can expand into China and other Asian countries in order to gain more market share by either acquiring smaller CRO’s in the region or simply growing organically while forming strategic partnerships as they have done in the past. Should Quintiles ever need to raise more funds, rather than diluting shares, it can issue more of it’s private shares while allowing the private equity firms to cash out even more at a later date. Definitely stick around for this one as it is bound to be very exciting going forward!