Who said the IPO market was dead...

In fact, this is one that reminds me of VMware (VMW) a few years back.

From CNNMoney by Steve Hargreaves entitled: AONE IPO charges car battery market

"Shares of A123 Systems, one of just a handful of U.S.-based makers of batteries for electric cars, debuted sharply higher from their offering price Thursday as investors cheered the closely watched firm.

A123's stock, which now trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol AONE, surged over 50% Thursday to close at $20.10 a share, a day after the company raised $380 million through an initial public offering.

The offering was priced late Wednesday at $13.50 a share, well above the originally proposed range, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. It began trading Thursday at $17 a share.

Buzz around the company is running high. "I heard it was standing room only at many of the presentations," that the company made for money managers, said one person familiar with the firm.

The company is closely watched for several reasons.

First, its origins and backers give it some credibility in the high tech world.

The company, an outgrowth of the research labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is based in Watertown, Mass. along the Route 128 technology corridor. It was founded in 2001 with a $100,000 grant from the Department of Energy, and now has facilities in 10 countries. The firm has around 1,700 employees, mostly located abroad.

Analysts give the company credit for developing a very competitive technology that relied on the nanotechnology research from MIT.

Since then then it has raised money from venture capital funds and a few high profile companies, including General Electric and Motorola.

The firm recently won a $250 million grant from the federal government to build a production facility outside Detroit - the second largest grant awarded in a recent $2.4 billion round of stimulus-related funding. The factory will complement production facilities the company already has in Asia.

And Asia is probably the biggest reason A123 is so closely watched. The firm is one of just a few American companies that are competing with much larger Asian rivals for the potentially lucrative market for hybrid and plug-in electric car batteries.

Many analysts believe electric cars will begin replacing internal combustion engines, refueling with nuclear or renewable-generated electricity as the world becomes more concerned with global warming.

Since the battery is the most expensive component in an electric car, the conventional wisdom has it that whoever controls the battery market may ultimately control the auto industry."

This is one to keep eye on....

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A123 Systems IPO

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