A common reframe over the past few years has been that private markets are the new public markets.
Translation: Startups can score big funding rounds + fat valuations without going public and courting extra scrutiny.
WeWork — which has seen its valuation implode from $47B to <$5B after September 2019’s failed IPO attempt — is the most salient example of the pitfalls of going public.
This year has been different: with a record ~$800B in equity raised by nonfinancial firms, per The Economist.
Those 2 factors have contributed to an especially hot public equity market this year:
The accommodating markets have also led to a boom in special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs).
A major reason for this is that most governments allow interest payments to be deducted from taxes.
Despite this, companies have been happy to tap equity markets, which do have notable benefits, per The Economist:
As highlighted by the Wall Street Journal, new public tech companies are trading at ~24x the total of their 12 months of revenue prior to an IPO, the highest ratio in the last 2 decades.
Recent tech entrants have been treated very kindly:
Things are getting so crazy that gaming startup Roblox and fintech firm Affirm just delayed their much-anticipated IPOs to review the process.
In other words, they’ll likely tap the equity markets for much more cheddar.