The IPO Roadshow Is Back to Life
The initial public offering (IPO) draft was abruptly put on hold three months ago for reasons that require no explanation. Since hitting bottom, stocks have risen in disbelief, hope, optimism, and now thrill. There’s still pandemic and protest, but if the markets say they’re ready for new stock offerings, they’re ready!
We have eight companies set to hear the claxon this week, including the world’s third-largest record company and music publisher. Warner Music has benefited from a sectoral renaissance thanks to Spotify and online music streaming. It’s preparing for a $1.7 billion-dollar listing today, the largest on an American exchange in 2020, so its debut will be a major test of market bullishness. The other newcomers are no penny stocks, either!
ZoomInfo has timed its listing to perfection. There’s an ‘x-as-a-service’ boom taking hold, not unlike in the nineties when companies could double their stock prices by adding ‘dot-com’ to the end of their names. ZoomInfo is soon to be an unprofitable growth stock offering business-intelligence software-as-a-service (SaaS). It won’t trade flat!
Shift4 Payments helps big-ticket clients like KFC and The Metropolitan Museum of Art handle multichannel payments. Dada Nexus is the Chinese Deliveroo, and already has Walmart and JD.com interested, while Legend Biotech will be the biggest IPO of the biotech space this year.
There remain scores of great investors that believe luxurious new offerings should not be happening. The decoupling between the stock market and record unemployment, thousands of dead, an unraveling trade deal, and protests on the street is extreme. You have to believe in the power of multi-trillion-dollar stimulus and pent-up demand to be a buyer. Do you?