Now past the halfway mark of the third quarter, we are quickly chewing through 2023. Soon it will be Disrupt season, and then we’ll head straight into the fourth quarter. For tech companies, that means the window to file for an IPO this year is beginning to close.
Happily, some companies are expected to actually go public before 2023 ends.
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Instacart, the heavily venture-backed grocery delivery and software company, is expected by some to file for its IPO as early as this week, aiming for an early-September debut. Databricks remains an IPO candidate, though it is unlikely to go “first” among former startups looking to list. The ARM transaction is also coming, putting another big-name company on the list.
The flurry of news — and, likely, progress in IPO prep and planning at some of tech’s biggest private names — comes in the middle of a slightly bad time for tech shares. Still, tech stocks have regained around half of their losses since the last tech boom faded. A week of selling can’t dent real progress by tech companies on the public markets, even if this market could trim revenue multiples for upcoming IPOs.
To get here, we needed a lot of time, the SPAC bubble had to fade, revenue multiples had to reinflate, and two companies with good IPO pricing and early trading runs had to generate a lot of publicity with their own listings. If you’re hoping that your employer will finally get out the door in the next few quarters, then swing by a Cava location wearing Oddity cosmetics, because those two companies did you and your illiquid holdings a real solid by listing well earlier this year.
Technology and finance media have recently had a lot to say on the IPO matter. The Information broke news regarding Instacart’s and Databricks’ growth rates, helping frame their impending listings with real numbers. The Financial Times has news about each of the core IPO candidates we’ve discussed ad nauseam. Bloomberg has notes as well. And Yahoo Finance reported that as the tech IPO market gets off its backside, it could have a massively busy 2024.