Is the IPO Market Back?

June 02, 2011 | Christopher Caparelli, CFA, Partner

As LinkedIn’s highly successful IPO commanded lofty valuations and headlines across the financial press, commentators began drawing parallels to the hot IPO market that preceded the tech collapse at the end of the last decade. Although it has likely been ten years since a new company listing has generated so much buzz, the state of the equity IPO market in the U.S. has a long way to go before reaching the levels seen in the late 1990’s. Through the end of May 2011, 95 new deals came to market raising aggregate proceeds of nearly $30 billion. With a backlog of companies expected to go public in the second half of the year, 2011 is projected to surpass the improved totals recorded in 2010. The offering market has seen a revival since 2008 when only 58 companies went public, but is still a long way from the types of numbers seen in 1999 when 549 companies listed raising over $90 billion.