A wave of new IPOs may assuage investors concerned about the recent dip equity markets.
Some of the key IPO players include a new subscription-based company, Zuora (NYSE: ZUO), which uses cloud technology to provide subscription payment services to 950 customers across 30 countries. Shares of Zuora began trading on Thursday under the ticker symbol ZUO on the New York Stock Exchange. The company kickstarted an immensely successful IPO, pricing shares at $14 and closing at exactly $20, up 43%.
The success is not expected to end here. Many other Silicon Valley venture capitalists expect the gains to continue. Over the last decade, hundreds of billions of dollars have been funneled into the venture capital industry. Those funds were then invested into a variety of young companies in the hope of finding the next Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) or Google (NASDAQ: FB) among a plethora of not-so-lucky companies. These investors have enjoyed a lot of paper gains in recent years. But few have cashed in on it because the fastest-rising companies, like Uber and Airbnb, have remained private, amassing unprecedented valuations. But experts say they expect this to change in the next 1-2 years, generating billions in returns.
What's more is that the two of the biggest tech, app-based start-ups that had investors riled up- Dropbox, an online file storage company, and Spotify, the streaming music service based in Sweden - successfully went public over the past month. Tech I.P.O.s have already raised more than $7 billion this year - more than all of 2015 and 2016, and more than half the $13 billion they raised last year, according to the market-data firm Dealogic.
"I think the success of Dropbox's I.P.O. shows that great companies that are built to last can still access the I.P.O. window, despite a week of incredible volatility and distraction about global trade," said Bryan Schreier, a Dropbox board member and partner at Sequoia Capital, the large venture capital firm that was one of Dropbox's early investors.
The influx of cash fueled the tech economy. Between 2006 and 2016, the last year with available data, economic output in the metropolitan area that roughly corresponds to Silicon Valley rose more than 5% a year, while the average growth rate in American metro areas was 1.2%.
Overall, the market seems to be functioning perfectly in accordance with the flight to safety model right now, where the vacuum created by weary investors has been filled by up-and-coming companies looking to capitalize on their more established competitors' losses. Whether the market will respond well to this remains to be seen.