10 IPOs that flopped
Facebook's IPO may have failed to live up to expectations, but the social networking company is not alone as other companies befell the same troubles.
The venerable rental car company, once owned by Ford Motor, was bought by a private equity group via a leveraged buyout in 2005. Just a year or so later, management took Hertz public at $15 a share, pocketing a cool $1.4 billion in the process.
But the short turnaround between going private and going public worried many investors, who thought the new owners treated Hertz like a rental. The stock eventually rose to more than $26 by June 2007. By Feb. 2009, however, shares of Hertz had fallen to around $3. Seven years since the IPO, Hertz stock is trading at nearly $13 — still below its initial offering price.
