TLTP
NEW YORK
December is set to be the busiest year-end on record for initial public offerings in the US, with DoorDash and Airbnb ready to start trading this week in long-awaited listings.
The two startups, which are aiming to raise a combined $6.2 billion at the top-end of their price ranges, will propel the month’s IPO volume to all-time high, surpassing the $8.3bn mark set in December of both 2001 and 2003. IPOs on US exchanges have already raised a record $156bn this year, the data show.
Both listings got an additional boost as the companies headed into the final stretch of marketing their shares. DoorDash upped the price range for its stock in a Friday filing, while Airbnb is planning to follow suit and increase its price range ahead of its IPO, people familiar with the matter said Sunday. The companies are now each expected to raise as much as $3.1bn, putting them among the top five biggest US IPOs of 2020.
Private companies that sat out the market chaos in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic — and were awaiting a final outcome in the US election — are now rushing to go public.
Also on deck to go public this month are Affirm Holdings, which lets online shoppers pay for purchases such as Peloton bikes in installments, online video-game company Roblox and ContextLogic, the parent of discount online retailer Wish. Each is likely to attain a valuation of tens of billions of dollars in its listing.
“This group of companies that you have coming out now maybe weren’t thought of initially as benefiting, but they’ve been able to show very strong results despite the coronavirus,” said Karen Snow, head of East Coast listings at Nasdaq.
Airbnb is aiming to be valued at as much as $42bn in its IPO, while DoorDash could hit a valuation of about $35bn, based on their updated price ranges. For DoorDash, that’s more than double the private valuation it hit in a June fundraising round, after it seized on the pandemic-fueled boom in demand for meals brought to your door.
Airbnb had been valued at $18bn in April after raising additional debt to shore up its finances. The company, which was initially hit hard by global travel restrictions, has more recently seen a boom in customers seeking longer-term, domestic rentals.
Airbnb’s IPO will also be a lucrative event for many of its employees. The company has offered billions of dollars worth of stock compensation to staff, similar to Uber Technologies and other large venture-backed companies that have gone public. The IPO will make some of its longtime employees millionaires on paper.
