Since then, shares in Arm haven’t really taken off. After an initial surge, the stock has fallen back to trade at $54 apiece, close to its $51 issue price. Days after Arm’s IPO, grocery delivery firm Instacart went public. Its Nasdaq-listed shares also soared when they started trading, but are now fetching their issue price of $30 each. The lukewarm reception for those deals suggests Wall Street may still be nursing a hangover from the collapse of a post-pandemic IPO bubble in 2022.
Hong Kong has been held back by poor valuations, Chan said, while a “pipeline of good companies” are prevented from listing on exchanges on China’s mainland because of regulatory restrictions. Those should lift within the next six to 12 months, he adds. Listings in Europe and the United States are hamstrung by high interest rates, which have raised returns on safe assets such as government bonds and dented investors’ appetite for riskier bets.