Gain Capital (Forex.com) goes public with IPO, price below range

Gain Capital Holdings (NYSE:GCAP), which operates retail foreign exchange broker FOREX.COM and other related services like contracts-for-difference trading, will debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday under the symbol GCAP.

Through its initial public offering (IPO) of 9,000,000 shares at a price of $9.00 per share, the company raised $81 million -- this is 35 percent lower than the company's expected range of $13 to $15. Moreover, the 9,000,000 shares is lower than the 11,000,000 shares it planned to sell.

At $9 per share, the whole company is probably valued at $357 million, according to Nick Einhorn, a research analyst at Renaissance Capital, an IPO investment firm.

Gain Capital would not say how much the whole company is valued at until a conference call at 12 p.m. New York time.

Gain Capital first filed with the SEC to do an IPO back in August 2009 and wanted to raise up to $125 million.

Earlier in December, rival retail foreign exchange broker FXCM (NYSE:FXCM) raised $211 million from its IPO. At their IPO price, the company was valued at $1 billion. However, since then, FXCM shares have fallen more than 6 percent since its debut.

Gain Capital generated $188 million for the 12 months ended September 30. FXCM generated $325 million for the 12 months ended June 30.

FXCM has 174,000 tradeable accounts while Gain Capital has 52,000 active accounts. These two methods of calculations are roughly comparable and it is clear that FXCM has a sizable lead over Gain Capital, said Einhron.

FXCM's relatively poor performance since its IPO and the fact that Gain Capital is a smaller player compared to FXCM dampened demand for Gain Capital's IPO, said Einhorn.