Initial Public Offering

Deutsche Telekom said Sunday that it sold its shares at 28.50 marks each, raising as much as $13.2 billion for the world's third-largest telecommunications company in one of the biggest initial public offerings ever. Telekom sold 623 million shares, or about a 24% stake, toward the upper end of the 25- to 30-mark expected price range to the public and employees. The share price values Telekom at about $49.7 billion and ushers in a new era for the company and for the German equities market.

Bay Area solar energy company SolarCity Corp. is looking to raise as much as $151 million in its highly anticipated initial public stock offering. The San Mateo business - which helps residential, commercial and government clients such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., EBay and the U.S. military set up solar power-generating systems - said it expects its shares to sell for $13 to $15 each. The company plans to sell 10 million shares, while shareholders will offer 65,012 shares, SolarCity said in an amended filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Yelp Inc., the popular Internet site for customer-written reviews of restaurants, hotels and other services, expects its shares to hit the market at a price of $12 to $14 each, giving the company a value of as much as $840 million. The company said in a regulatory filing this week that it hopes to raise about $100 million in its initial public offering of more than 7.1 million shares. Its charitable foundation will sell 50,000 shares in the IPO, planned for early March. It plans to sell nearly 12% of the nearly 60 million total shares outstanding.

Facebook shares were taking another beating in early trading on Wall Street, falling more than 6% shortly after the opening bell. Facebook's stock was trading under $32 a share, $6 below its IPO price and where it settled on its first day of trading Friday. Facebook shares slid 11% on Monday. The social networking company's disappointing performance in its stock market debut is likely to continue to raise questions about the underwriting process for its highly hyped initial public offering.

On Assignment Inc., a Canoga Park provider of temporary workers for laboratories, has completed its initial public offering with the sale of 1.7 million shares at $7 each. The company itself sold 300,000 in last week's offering, receiving $2.1 million in gross proceeds before underwriting costs. The remaining 1.4 million shares were offered by an existing stockholder, Wood River Capital Corp., a small-business investment firm in New York. The stock closed Monday at $7.

Headlands Mortgage Co., a specialty banking company that focuses on mortgages for one- to four-family residences, plans to sell 8 million common shares in an initial public offering, raising as much as $62 million after expenses. The mortgage company, based in Larkspur, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the first-time stock sale, saying new investors would own 24.3% of the 18.5 million shares outstanding after the offering. Headlands plans to sell 4.

The athletic shoe company, which had been expected for months to make the offering, said in filings with the SEC that it expects 2.68 million common shares to go on the public market in mid-March at an initial price of between $11 and $14 a share. Merrill Lynch Capital Markets and Montgomery Securities are the lead underwriters. The Portland, Ore., company makes Avia aerobics, tennis and other athletic shoes and Donner Mountain hiking boots.

Re "IPO falls short of the hype," May 19 As Facebook has so glaringly and extravagantly demonstrated, the IPO, or initial public offering, is no such thing. We might just as well call it an initial privileged offering, an IEO (initial elite offering) or an ICO (initial corporate offering). But we of the "public" had nothing resembling a chance. As the women of old who had to put up a hefty dowry to snag a wealthy spouse, Facebook could declare an initial dowry offering, or an "I DO!

Maybe the dumb money wasn't so dumb this time. The stock market did turn out to be a voting machine on Facebook on Friday (to quote Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham), and the vote was thumbs-down on flapdoodle. Market pros will be debating the lessons to be drawn from the disastrous first-day trading in Facebook's initial public offering. But one lesson is that when given enough information, investors can find their way through fogbanks of hype. When a stock offering is as closely followed as Facebook's, it's much more likely that the shares will be fully valued than that they'll harbor hidden treasure.

SAN FRANCISCO — Dressed in his trademark hoodie and jeans, Facebook Inc. co-founder Mark Zuckerberg kicked off a cross-country roadshow to pitch his company's initial public stock offering. Hundreds of institutional investors stood in long lines Monday to pile into a ballroom at New York's Sheraton Hotel to hear the billion-dollar pitch from the 27-year-old chief executive before his company's hotly anticipated IPO. The meeting was closed to the media. Facebook is trying to build excitement for the IPO that in a few weeks could value the company at more than $96 billion.

SAN FRANCISCO — The rapid growth of Facebook Inc. showed signs of slowing in the first quarter, potentially cooling investors' fervor just weeks before the company's hotly anticipated initial public stock offering. Facebook generated $1.06 billion in sales, the second quarter in a row sales topped $1 billion. That represented a 45% jump from a year earlier but a 6% decline compared with the fourth quarter. The financial performance, the company's most anemic since at least 2010, fell below analysts' expectations.

Fender Musical Instruments Corp., the iconic company that has been making guitars in California since its inception in 1946, is seeking to raise $200 million in an initial public stock offering. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, Fender said it intends to use the money to help pay down $246.2 million in debt and to acquire other businesses. Although its corporate headquarters are now in Scottsdale, Ariz., the company was founded in Fullerton and makes its American Standard Stratocaster and Telecaster guitars at a 3-acre manufacturing plant in Corona.

The euphoria surrounding a red-hot initial public offering often doesn't last long. Investors in Yelp Inc. may be discovering that. Shares of the Internet-review site declined nearly 15% on Monday, an about-face from their sizzling 64% surge on the company's first day of trading Friday. Yelp slid $3.59 to $20.99. It's common for IPO shares to cool down in the aftermath of a blistering IPO, and is not necessarily a bad sign for the long-term prospects of a company or a stock.

Yelp Inc., the popular Internet site for customer-written reviews of restaurants, hotels and other services, expects its shares to hit the market at a price of $12 to $14 each, giving the company a value of as much as $840 million. The company said in a regulatory filing this week that it hopes to raise about $100 million in its initial public offering of more than 7.1 million shares. Its charitable foundation will sell 50,000 shares in the IPO, planned for early March. It plans to sell nearly 12% of the nearly 60 million total shares outstanding.

Yelp Inc. will price itself at $12 to $14 a share when it starts trading on the market, the crowd-sourced review website said in regulatory filings Thursday. The company, which values itself at $840 million on the high end, plans to sell more than 7.1 million shares. Its charitable foundation will sell 50,000 shares. Yelp's market introduction could raise as much as $100 million once it emerges on the New York Stock Exchange as YELP. The San Francisco-based company began moving toward an initial public offering in November , even though its net loss last year increased to $16.7 million from $9.6 million the year before.