TMX also counted 158 new listings on the exchanges as of April, while all of last year had 300 and 2019 saw 273.
But he believes the spike seen this year is more of a blip than a long-term pattern because the number of IPOs has been falling since the dot-com bubble, when a rapid rise in technology stock valuations in the late 1990s ended in failure after businesses didn't live up to expectations. Lalani was keen on being part of the rush because the pandemic proved to him how resilient his company was and how much room for growth it had.
General Assembly held its IPO on June 3, pricing more than 22.3 million shares at $1.73 on the TSXV. They closed at 94 cents that day and have since fallen to around 68 cents. "There's a ton of money available for both venture capital funding and IPOs, and so I think that opened the floodgates," Smith said."In the middle of Thinkific's IPO, we saw quite a drop in the TSX and in the markets and so there was a point there where we questioned whether we were going to be able to go through and do it," he recalled.
"They loaded us onto the float and drove us around my neighbourhood... which was actually quite a bit of fun," Smith said. "Some clapped. Some waved hi."
There are still a lot of underlying fundamentals we still have not yet answered related to the cost of this COVID mess and ongoing pressures on the global debt. IPO's will need to factor into their business plans the shifting landscape. This is a huge risk to investors.