Be still, my beating heart. Is this how the IPO market is moving? We broke news today that event ticketing company SeatGeek had confidentially filed with regulators for its IPO, just days after blockchain company Chia Network Inc. announced it had done the same. (Read more about Chia in our Crypto Global Newsletter today). A long line of other companies were already waiting for the right moment to go public, including Instacart, Reddit, travel startup Navan and possibly Rippling, judging from comments by CEO Parker Conrad in our weekend profile.
Given the performance of tech stocks so far this year, the moment of the IPO market could be this fall. The Nasdaq is up 16% year-to-date, and many of the stocks that tumbled last year have rallied a bit. (Few are likely to fully recover for any length of time.) Sure, the market will continue to recover, especially if interest rates continue to rise. But it seems likely that some deals will hit the market next Labor Day. The good news is that valuations have fallen over the past 12 months, meaning investors are less likely to get burned by ridiculously overpriced IPOs like the ones we saw in the final days of the 2021 boom. We’re thinking of footwear maker Allbirds and electric truck maker Rivian, whose shares have fallen 91% and 84%, respectively, since their November 2021 IPO.
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