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Alex Wilhelm<\/span> Contributor<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Alex Wilhelm is the editor-in-chief of Crunchbase News<\/a> and co-host of Equity<\/a>, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast.<\/p>\n By this time last year, one tech company had gone public. Already this year, nine tech companies have gone public on U.S. exchanges. Needless to say, public exits are looking up.<\/p>\n That comparison becomes starker\u00a0when you compare SecureWorks, 2016\u2019s first IPO<\/a>, to Snap, which went public in 2017. SecureWorks priced under range, and it has since fallen nearly 38 percent from its IPO price. Snap, in contrast, priced above range<\/a> and then saw its share price quickly ascend<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s too early to compare 2017\u2019s IPO crop closely to 2016\u2019s. That said, we can still parse out some interesting numbers from the\u00a0cadre of newly public tech companies in 2017. So, under that edict, let\u2019s explore.<\/p>\n The nine companies that have gone public this year in alphabetical order are\u00a0Alteryx<\/a>, Carvana<\/a>, Cloudera<\/a>, Elevate Credit<\/a>, Mulesoft<\/a>, Netshoes, Okta<\/a>, Snap<\/a>\u00a0and Yext<\/a>. (The list would have a tenth entrant, of course, if not for AppDynamics\u2019 pre-IPO exit<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The list of companies includes a number of enterprise-facing concerns, a Brazilian e-commerce company (listed on the New York Stock Exchange, thus making the cut), and whatever Snap calls itself. All told, it\u2019s a moderately diverse mix of companies that vary, in terms of value, from just a few hundred million dollars to tens of billions.<\/p>\n That range brings us to the question of relative scale. Let\u2019s see where the numbers take us.<\/p>\n According to amended Google Finance data \u2014 you can follow along on a public copy of the raw figures here<\/a> \u2014 the\u00a0rank list of the most valuable 2017 tech IPOs is\u00a0stark:<\/p>\n The aggregate value of our nine IPOs is $37.5 billion. That allows us to deduce the following comparative metrics: Snap is worth more than two-thirds of all 2017 tech IPOs, tipping the scales at 68.8 percent; and Mulesoft, the second most valuable public 2017 IPO, clocks in at just 7.8 percent.<\/p>\n And, just for fun, the five-largest tech companies by market cap have gained nearly $50 billion in aggregate market cap today alone, more than the value of all 2017 IPOs.<\/p>\n This year, the media has mostly focused on the pace of growth and the value of that growth when it comes to IPOs.<\/p>\n This is reasonable. After all,\u00a0many tech companies are valued more on their expansion prospects than on their potential for near-term shareholder remuneration\u00a0via cash disbursements or buybacks.<\/p>\n Growth remains king.<\/p>\n As it turns out, that is a damn good thing for the 2017 set of U.S.-listed tech IPOs. Not one of these companies has a price\/earnings ratio. That\u2019s to say that they all lose money. Not one is profitable.<\/p>\n I can hear your complaints already: tech IPOs are supposed to lose money due to substantial\u00a0investment in growth. But that disregards the fact that four of the five largest tech companies by market cap were profitable at IPO, at least one 2016 IPO was profitable at the time of its debut (Acacia Communications, the year\u2019s second IPO), and another was close (Line). So perhaps we\u2019ll see some companies in the black make it across the finish line as the year progresses.<\/p>\n I raise all of that to underscore the pace<\/em>-to-date of IPOs this year. By May 1, 2016, the year\u2019s IPO tally was one, and by mid-May, it had crawled to two. This year, two companies went public last Friday alone, and the pipeline includes published S-1s<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2017, we have averaged an IPO every 13.3 days\u2014just under two weeks. 2016, by mid-May, was at a pace of one every 66.5 days.<\/p>\n That\u2019s quite an acceleration.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been a great year thus far for startup and unicorn liquidity alike. That is partially due to the Nasdaq setting new highs on a seemingly regular basis. (It\u2019s not as hard to IPO when tech stocks are at record prices, as you can imagine.)<\/p>\n What will be interesting to see is how many more companies can make it out before the market changes, and the IPO window closes, if only in part.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll check back in after the next few debuts to see what\u2019s changed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More posts by this contributor:\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nWho<\/h2>\n
Scale<\/h2>\n
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Losses And Pace<\/h2>\n
Looking Ahead<\/h2>\n
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By this time last year, one tech company had gone public. Already this year, nine tech companies have gone public on U.S. exchanges. Needless to say, public exits are looking up.
\nThat comparison becomes starker\u00a0when you compare SecureWorks, 2016’s first IPO, to Snap, which went public in 2017. SecureWorks priced under range, and it has since fallen nearly 38 percent from its IPO price. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
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