Intrepid Potash is the hottest kid on the block.

Intrepid Potash's IPO flies

Opening at $32, it ends up 58%

Gargi Chakrabarty and David Milstead

Rocky Mountain News, April 22, 2008

Denver's newest public company debuted Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange, jumping about 60 percent within hours of trading and finishing the day by far the biggest gainer on Wall Street.

The company is the largest U.S.-based producer of potash, a key ingredient in fertilizer. A bullish investor outlook for the agricultural sector propelled the stock as high as $51.20 a share. It closed at $50.40 a share, up 58 percent from its initial public offering price of $32.

At Tuesday's closing price, the company, trading under the symbol IPI, has a market capitalization of nearly $3.8 billion.

"I am not really surprised," said analyst Ben Johnson with Chicago-based firm Morningstar Inc. Johnson had suggested an estimated price of $46 a share last week, based on fundamentals of the potash market.

The price of potash has skyrocketed in past months, boosted by demand from China and India. The price at which China contracted potash this year, $576 a ton, is nearly triple last year's $176 a ton contract, Johnson said.

Francis Gaskins of IPOdesktop said the offering was buoyed by the recent run-up of Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan. "I can't recall an IPO where a major competitor was up nearly 100 percent in the last six months," he said. "That really cleared the path for this one."

Intrepid grossed more than $1.1 billion on the offering, presuming underwriters sell extra shares to satisfy demand. It has said it will use proceeds to acquire all of predecessor company Intrepid Mining's assets other than cash and repay debt under its existing credit facility.