Year-End IPO Rush

There are only a few weeks left in 2020 and in the last few days, there has been a notable number of private companies rushing to file to go public before the year ends. In a normal year, the early winter months are generally calmer as deals slow down but as well all know, 2020 has been far from normal. With COVID-19 derailing company IPO plans in spring and early summer, we are seeing a record-breaking rush for IPOs as companies take advantage of the post-election rally in stock prices as well as investor confidence in tech brands.

Photo by Aditya Vyas on Unsplash

• In September, many tech startups filed to go public, notably Unity, Snowflake, Palantir, and Asana.
• The highly anticipated IPO of Airbnb is finally on its path as they filed their S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although the pandemic had threatened the company’s business model, it quickly recovered by marketing rural socially distant home rentals and maintains a $30BN valuation.
• Food delivery service DoorDash also shed light on its success as a result of the pandemic in its IPO filing reporting an accumulated Q3 growth of $1.9BN sales compared to $587MM in the first nine months of 2019. 
• Video game company Roblox is a big winner from the pandemic, thriving in popularity for its online games as everyone was forced to stay at home. Their games have also been popular in spurring online education, as we share in our in-depth report on K1-12 learning shifts. Their filing shows their Q3 revenue jumped by 91%.
• Fintech company Affirm, a company that offers online installment loans allowing you to pay later at their partnering merchants, filed for IPO last week. Its filing revealed its revenue has grown 98% YOY.
• Online marketplace Wish was the latest company to file for an IPO last week showing slow but rising revenue. Although the company was hard hit by the pandemic as its supply and logistics was crippled, its filing reveals it is continually closing its gap on net losses while ramping up over 100 million monthly active users in over 100 countries.