Sept 14 - Shares in SoftBank's Arm Holdings opened 18% above their offer price in their Nasdaq debut on Thursday, valuing the British chip designer at nearly $60 billion in its return to the public markets after seven years.
High-profile names including grocery delivery service Instacart, German footwear maker Birkenstock, and marketing automation platform Klaviyo are preparing to go public in coming weeks. If those IPOs succeed, they will likely trigger a wave of stock market launches in 2024, bankers and analysts said.
The Japanese investment giant took Arm private in 2016 for $32 billion. It has been looking to cash out some of its stake since at least 2020, when it agreed to sell Arm to chipmaker Nvidia in a $40 billion deal. It had to abandon that plan due to regulatory roadblocks. "He is quite bullish on the company. The price today or even in the near term isn't really his focus, the focus is where's the price gonna be in the in the future."
The 10 biggest U.S. IPOs of the past four years are down an average of 47% from the closing price on their first day of trading, the analysis of LSEG data as of Friday showed.