The IPO market is back in full swing
IPOs are back in full swing after the biggest week for public listings year-to-date in this coronavirus era.
Warner Music Group (WMG) last week raised $1.9 billion during its debut, making it the biggest IPO of the year, while ZoomInfo (ZI), a cloud based platform for sales and marketing teams, raised almost $1 billion. Shares of ZoomInfo closed over 60% higher on its first day of trading.
Shift4 Payments (FOUR) also received a solid welcome on the public markets last week. The company, which processes payments for over 200,000 businesses, priced its IPO above its range, at $23 a share. Shares soared 45% on Friday.
Shift4âs founder and CEO Jared Isaacman told Yahoo Finance his companyâs roadshow was postponed back in March due to COVID-19. But his company saw encouraging signs in the economy, with âa recovery happeningâ over the last several weeks.
âWe have tons of data, and we started to see the recovery really in late March and through April, and then really accelerate in May,â said Isaacman. âThatâs what gave us the confidence to kind of reignite the IPO process and get it going.â
âThere was a time when there was no commerce going on outside supermarkets, Netflix (NFLX), or Amazon (AMZN),â said Isaacman.
He says during the darkest periods of declines amid the pandemic, payment volumes dropped 70-75% in late March.
âBut right now weâre seeing a 120% recovery from that period. That sure looks like a V-recovery to us,â he said.
âThere are several states around the country that have cities that have reached pre-Covid processing levels, which is just a really encouraging sign for everybody else as we move forward,â he added.
Isaacman wasnât shocked by the May jobs report, which showed the economy added 2.5 million jobs, instead of shedding jobs as economists had expected.
âWe werenât surprised … because it certainly coincides with what weâve been seeing in the numbers for the last few weeks,â he added.
IMAGE DISTRIBUTED FOR THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE – The New York Stock Exchange welcomes Shift4 Payments, Inc. (NYSE: FOUR) in celebration of its IP on Friday, June 5, 2020, in New York. (New York Stock Exchange via AP Images)
The recent IPOs come amid the biggest 50-day market rally in history following the March 23rd lows. Investors appear to have a renewed appetite for listings after the IPO market fizzled out last year following the WeWork debacle.
Another batch of companies are set to go public this week, including used-car marketplace Vroom. The company aims to sell 18.75 million shares when it debuts on the Nasdaq under the ticker âVRM,â and currently expects to price shares between $15-$17.
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