Found an interesting article from the Associated Press while I was watching Gene Simmons Family Jewels last night (fun episode, Shannon on painkillers buying Ginsu knives and Gene trying to figure out how to stimulate the economy -- by ringing the opening bell). The article says Scott Painter and business partner Greg Brogger have started a group called SharesPost.

This vehicle was launched publicly in June and allows Painter to try and sell shares in companies he helped found, which includes car pricing start-up TrueCar.com. However, Painter wants to go further, backing an idea allowing insiders to sell shares in companies before their initial public offering (IPO). A couple of the companies Painter is interested in include Twitter and LinkedIn (sites you may be familiar with).

Mergers and acquisitions aren't delivering the fees that investment bankers used to enjoy, but fortunately, the money's coming from elsewhere. Data from Thomson Reuters reports a 29% increase in capital markets and M&A fees for the first time in more than a year. Share sales (e.g., rights offerings) were where dealmakers found the action. In the shrinking M&A space, Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) has taken the lead spot.

Since there are fewer banks in the marketplace than there were a year ago -- and they have less money -- the capital is starting to come from elsewhere. Because they aren't lending at their previous pace, companies are issuing bonds and equity to replenish their coffers. Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), for example, raked in more than $23 billion from the bond market to fund its acquisition of Wyeth (NYSE: WYE), and Roche nabbed Genentech with the help of a $30 billion debt issuance.

IPO. Initial public offering. Or as they used to be known among the Wall Street cynics: "It's probably overpriced." Not any more. Nothing that is too expensive will fly these days. In fact, if it's not a bargain, don't bother to talk with the bankers. Investors want history, especially ones with increasing sales and profits.

The year 2009 has already produced more IPOs than all of 2008. Sound impressive? Here are the numbers: this year there have been seven. So there aren't a lot of companies going public right now, but still, there are some. And most of them are doing well.

OpenTable Inc. (NASDAQ: OPEN) came into the world with a bang on Thursday, shooting from $20 a share to a peak of $33 before settling down for the week at $28.75. A 44% gain makes this the second strong initial public offering (IPO) for a venture-backed company, following the SolarWinds Inc. (NYSE: SWI) debut the day before.

Originally, OpenTable planned a price range of $12 to $14, which crept up to $16 to $18, and eventually to its final level of $20.

With the slowing US economy, it's been tough for retailers. Yet, there are some that are bucking the trend.

An example is Metropark, which is a fashion-conscious retailer focused on the 20 to 35 year-old demographic. Metropark believes that its market segment is underserved – and poised for much more growth, so today the company has also filed to go public.

In fact, the Metropark store environment is much like a stylish night club with regular live performances by disc jockeys and the sales personnel that are called "Style Consultants."

Some of the premium brands offered include: Acrylic, Affliction, Ed Hardy, English Laundry, Monarchy, Obey, Rock & Republic and True Religion.

No doubt, Metropark's growth has been particularly strong. In 2004, the company launched with four stores. Now, there are 43 stores in 17 states. From 2005 to 2007, revenues have gone from $11.5 million to $71.6 million.

Metropark also has a stellar management team. The company's CEO and founder, Orval Madden, was the mastermind behind Hot Topic Inc. (NASDAQ: HOTT).

The lead underwriter on the IPO is Goldman, Sachs & Co. (NYSE: GS) and the proposed ticker symbol is "MTPK." You can locate the prospectus at the SEC website.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates MergerBook.com.

Safety-Kleen got its start in 1963 as a parts washer for auto repair. However, by the late 1990s, Laidlaw bought the company and added waste disposal assets (such as for landfills). Unfortunately, a few years later, the company was mired in an SEC investigation and bankruptcy.

But after a painful restructuring, Safety-Kleen is back on track. In fact, the company has filed for a public offering.

As of now, Safety-Kleen is the largest collector, recycler and re-refiner of used oil. The company also is a provider of environmental solutions (such as containerized waste services). There are more than 200 facilities across the US, Canada and Mexico.

Customers include 420 of the Fortune 500 and more than 300,000 small-to-medium sized companies. In fact, this is a user base that tends to have recurring requirements, making for a nice revenue stream. So last year, Safety-Kleen posted $1 billion in revenues and $116.6 million in adjusted EBITDA.

Safety-Kleen has market power and a dominant brand (there is a key deal with NASCAR). And with extensive regulations, the company should continue to grow.

The lead underwriters on the IPO include Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE: MER) and JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM). You can also find the prospectus at the SEC website.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates MergerBook.com.

Back in 2000, Rackspace attempted an IPO. Of course, the dot-com implosion derailed those plans.

Well, now the company is back and its IPO prospects look much better.

Rackspace is a giant in the web hosting industry. While the company has a solid infrastructure, it also has an extreme focus on customer service. In fact, the company terms it "Fanatical Support" (which is trademarked).

By the end of 2007, Rackspace had more than 29,000 customers. Actually, over the past five years, revenues have soared from $56.6 million to $362 million,a 59% annual growth rate. The company also posted a $17.8 million profit last year.

What's more, the prospects for the global hosting market look bright. According to Tier1Research, the market is expected to grow 26% per year to $24.4 billion by 2010.

The lead underwriters on the IPO include Goldman, Sachs & Co. (NYSE: GS), Credit Suisse (NYSE: CS) and Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE: MER). You can find the prospectus at the SEC website.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook (www.mergerbook.com) and is also a principal in Averiware, which provides an ERP system to small and midsize businesses.

Recently, I've been getting too many emails and comments on my blog asking what I think of the Visa (NYSE: V) IPO. Listen, every single long-term investor should be interested in it. Until today, it's been one of the few remaining marquee companies around unavailable to our stock-obsessed society and aside from litigation risk, the company's got everything going for it.

It's got strong sales and transaction growth and more importantly, like rival MasterCard (NYSE: MA), it's immune to the current credit crunch, passing off cardholder debts to the banks. So, when others are sweating potentially catastrophic events like The Bear Stearns Companies Inc. (NYSE: BSC) and the potential collapse of other brokers like Lehman Brothers Holdings (NYSE: LEH), scaring everyone half to death, these guys are sitting pretty. This is also the main reason why MasterCard's stock has handily outperformed rivals American Express (NYSE: AXP) and Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS), two companies -- and stocks -- that are certainly feeling that credit pain.

There'll be plenty of other articles dissecting the company, but I find that in rare situations like these, it's best to think in terms of the general picture. Not because it's the right way to invest, but because it's the way most people do. And those most people are the ones who can really influence the stock price here.

Shares of Blackstone Group LP (NYSE: BX) have been dropping in early trading after the company reported this morning a plunge of 89% in its fourth-quarter profit. The company's quarterly numbers were dragged down by higher write-downs related to its holdings in bond insurer Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. Wall Street has reacted by pushing the stock down 3.4% to $14.08, and at one point, traded shares down to $13.82, which set a new all-time low for the stock since its debut last June.

Excluding compensation expenses, the manager of the world's largest leveraged-buyout fund announced that its quarterly profit dropped to $88 million, compared with $808.1 million a year ago. Blackstone's income declined through the quarter, hurt by its investment in Financial Guaranty Insurance.

Deterioration in the credit markets, which came with lower takeover fees and reduced the value of its new investments, made the company post adjusted earnings of 8 cents per share. As Trey Thoelcke discussed, analysts had been expecting Blackstone to show quarterly earnings of 19 cents per share. The company failed again to beat, or at least to match, analysts' predictions.

When I heard that Penthouse was planning to launch a $250 million IPO, my first response was that it sounded like a great buy. After all, as long as America's stocks of 16-year-olds, hand lotion, and kleenex remain high, it seems likely that Penthouse will continue to do solid business.

Then I came face-to-face with a difficult realization: I'm getting old. You see, when I was a teenager, we didn't have the internet, pay-per-view movies, or a back room at my local video store. We relied on good old fashioned print pornography. In those days, Playboy and Penthouse were the two great porn magazines that were considered mild enough to be sold in bookstores. It seemed like every teenager in my high school knew about and coveted the divine publications.

Then the video revolution happened. Suddenly, everyone with a couple of bucks and a rental card could pick up movies that made Penthouse and Playboy seem quaint. When the internet came along, the stock of available pornography multiplied and magazines seemed positively prehistoric. Penthouse compensated by launching other ventures, including a casino, which met with little success. They also changed their content from the soft-focus pictorials of my youth to hard-core exploitative photography. By the end of 2003, the company had filed for bankruptcy, had shed many of its magazine titles, and was desperately casting around for ways out of its financial morass.

Over the past couple years, I've met with Zach Nelson several times. He's a veteran of the software world and is currently the CEO of NetSuite (which starts trading tomorrow as NYSE: N). The company develops on-demand software for the small-to-mid size business (SMB) segment, essentially allowing for sophisticated enterprise resource planning (ERP) functionality at affordable pricing.

Despite the success of NetSuite, it has been in the shadows of mega player, Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM).

But this may change; that is, today NetSuite had a successful IPO, raising $161 million. At first, the company had a $13-$16 price range on the offering, but was able to price the deal at $26. NetSuite used an online Dutch auction system for its IPO, which allows any investor to participate.

The ERP market for large businesses is mostly dominated by SAP (NYSE: SAP) and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL). However, the SMB market is fairly under penetrated (Nelson calls it the "Fortune Five Million").

Constant Contact (NASDAQ: CTCT) launched its IPO back in early October, and the stock is since up about 35%. The company provides on-demand email marketing solutions primarily to small businesses.

Now, investors will have another email play -- ExactTarget has filed for an IPO.

However, ExactTarget's services are focused more on medium- and large-sized businesses. Some of the customers include Expedia.com, Florida Power and Light, USA TODAY, Liberty Mutual Group, Papa John's and Wellpoint (NYSE: WLP).

Not that long ago, people thought going to an online school was second-rate. But it's now becoming common – and widely accepted.

For the most part, online education has been mostly for adults (especially those who already have busy careers). But things are changing; take a look at K12 (NYSE: LRN). This online school caters to students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

K12 went public this week, spiking 36% to $25.55 in its shares' first day of trading.

The company's platform is quite sophisticated, which is the result of more than $100 million in curriculum and technology investments. There are more than 11,000 lessons, which employ things like Flash animations, real-time feedback and so on.

From 2004 to 2007, enrollments went from 11,000 to 27,000 and revenues increased from $71.4 million to $140.6 million (which is a compound annual growth rate of about 25%). K12 makes money primarily from contracts with public schools.

One of K12's major shareholders is Mike Milken, who was the "junk bond" king of the 1980s.

The lead underwriters on the IPO included Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and Credit Suisse (NYSE: CS).

You can find the prospectus at the SEC website. Also, if you want to find other recent IPO information, visit DealProfiles.com.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

One of the top IPOs for 2007 is comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), which is up more than 71%. The firm provides sophisticated measurement tools for online advertising, and has clients like Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT).

However, today comScore announced that it is canceling its follow-on equity offering. Why? According to the company's press release, there is "unwillingness of management and other selling shareholders to sell under current capital market conditions."

Actually, we are seeing other signs of weakness for equity offerings. For example, CreditCards.com and Paradigm (which is a software company) have withdrawn their IPOs.

Most likely, these companies will go to private investors for funding. In fact, this may be an opportunity for private equity firms looking for deals.

Also, keep in mind that the IPO market has only a few weeks left -- because of the Christmas holiday. In other words, don't expect much action until next year.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

No doubt, internet advertising is red hot. Unfortunately, in the case of last week's IPO of Internet Brands (NASDAQ: INET), things were mostly cold. The price range on the offering was $10-$12, but the company was only able to price its deal at $8.

Internet Brands develops and acquires consumer websites, such as in the categories of automotive, travel and home improvement. It has about 45 principal websites, which include properties like CarsDirect.com, FlyerTalk.com, and DoItYourself.com. The network attracted about 26.7 million unique visitors in September.

So, what's the problem? First of all, there is not much synergy among its different categories. After all, can you really cross-sell among automotive and home improvement sites?

Interestingly enough, Internet Brands also recently purchased Jelsoft Enterprises Limited, which develops the vBulletin board platform. Why? I'm really not sure.

What's more, I think it can be tough to manage a large number of diverse sites. Basically, this is something that is better for larger organizations, such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT).

Finally, revenues for the first nine months of 2007 actually fell from $65.2 million to $64.9 million. There was also a net loss of $2.4 million.

The lead underwriters on the deal included Thomas Weisel Partners and Jefferies.

You can find the prospectus at the SEC website. Also, if you want to find other recent information on IPOs, then visit DealProfiles.com.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.