Shares in SoftBank's Arm Holdings soared almost 25 per cent above their offer price in their Nasdaq debut on Thursday, valuing the British chip designer at US$65 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 US$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 US$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."
Investors who bought at the top of an intra-day price surge that often occurs in high-profile listings would have fared even worse, with an average loss of 53 per cent.