“I honestly thought last year would be the busiest in a couple of decades,” Aloke Gupte, JPMorgan’s co-head of equity capital markets for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told me. “This year has topped that by a distance.”
What’s happening: In the third quarter, which wraps up Thursday, 94 US initial public offerings, or IPOs, raised $27 billion. That makes it the best July-to-September period by deal count since 2000, according to a report from investment bank Renaissance Capital.
Globally, 2,044 new listings have brought in roughly $468 billion year-to-date, per Dealogic data compiled for CNN Business. That’s already surpassed a record-setting 2020, when 1,656 deals raised almost $358 billion.
The third quarter includes the typically slower summer period, when trading volume eases and bankers take vacations. Activity did taper off in August, but the overall calendar has been extremely full.
Healthcare and tech were the most active sectors, generating two-thirds of the quarter’s US IPOs, Renaissance Capital said. It also noted an uptick in consumer companies going public, including drive-thru coffee chain Dutch Bros., Swiss shoe brand On and grill-maker Weber.
Gupte pointed to a number of factors driving the recent boom, including the economic recovery, which has lifted stocks, and strong valuations across sectors.
This helps, too: Companies tapping public markets have seen shares perform well in early trading, with many enjoying huge day-one pops — an important marker both for the firms making their debuts and the banks who help price shares.
Why it matters: Gupte said that the success of recent IPOs is encouraging companies to go public earlier in their lifetime — a meaningful shift from recent years, when many startups have opted to stay private longer.
“Every single time the market’s fallen back, it’s come back and [reached] a new high,” Gupte said. “A very, very high class of companies are lining up to go public.”
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