Two months ago, I wrote a story entitled, “The IPO market is looking very shaky and facing challenges galore.” Two months later, the IPO market is still shaky, but there are definite signs of improvement. First, the broad market is just off new highs, always a good sign for IPOs. Second, three $100 million IPOs have filed to go public in the past week, including Viking (the cruise line operator) and Rubrik, a data management platform. “Recent filings have been encouraging,” Matt Kennedy at Renaissance Capital told me. Third, several recent high-profile IPOs are positive. Among them are venture capital-backed Astera Labs , one of the first AI stories of 2024 (it makes chips that boost the efficiency of servers), a $700 million deal that went public in mid-March at $36, went to $95 and is now at $70, well off its highs but still up 90%. Reddit went public at $34 a day later and is $45 today. That’s a success from the company’s point of view, though it is trading at the lower end of its range since going public. Greg Martin at Rainmaker Securities told me that the recent performance of Reddit and Astera Labs, “Were nice shots in the arm for the IPO market. They’re great data points with quality after-market performance (so far) that there is real market demand for new issuers.” Calendar starting to get busy Finally — and this is the best part — in the next two weeks, at least four IPOs are going public at the NYSE, each with a valuations north of $200 million. The calendar includes UL Solutions (the parent company is Underwriters Laboratories, famous for its product testing, inspection, and certification services), seeking to raise nearly $800 million this Friday at the NYSE. Nursing care facility provider PACS Group is looking to raise $400 million this Thursday at the NYSE. Next week, digital advertising firm Ibotta wants to come public in a $450 million IPO and Centuri Holdings, an energy/utilities infrastructure services company, will try and raise $250 million. Put those four together, and you have $1.9 billion in IPO money in the next two weeks. Is that a little, or a lot? Compared to the last three years, it’s a lot. Here’s a simple way to look at IPOs. The IPO market is seasonal, but on average in a good year (pre-Covid), we might see roughly $1 billion or more a week in IPOs, and we could expect three to five IPOs to raise over $100 million, each week. That hasn’t happened in a long time. Despite a pair of billion-dollar deals in the…
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