Written by Pitch Book
Snap may have gone public too much fanfare, but does its debut signify a renaissance for the 2017 IPO market? Regardless of how seriously investors take its performance as a bellwether, there are plenty of other important factors to take into account, particularly for private investment firms looking to take portfolio companies public.
Our 2016 US PE & VC IPO Review delves into multiple datasets to outline and analyze key trends, such as:
Plus, sponsor Deloitte offers five key considerations for companies preparing to go public.
A longer-term approach
Introduction
The dismal relationship between the private and public markets over the last couple of years has been nothing short of impressive, in the worst way. Connected at so many intersections, yet simultaneously, equally distant, the public and private spheres pose a complicated prospect for analysis. Traditional public market investors have found themselves in late-stage venture rounds, armed with an abundance of capital, an appetite for risk, and the patience to play a much more silent role with the companies they back. Shortly after this trend began to manifest, publicity started to break around the ostensibly unexpected transparency the likes of mutual funds would be required to offer concerning the valuations of their private holdings, which in many instances were marked to market using a given set of publicly traded comparables. Yet these same nontraditional investors helped fuel the continued trend of venture-backed companies ducking an exit to the public markets, and in many cases opting to continue raising primarily private capital. For those that actually sought more immediate liquidity, there was a clearly preferred exit route: acquisition by a strategic buyer.
