The exclusive world of initial public offers will meet explosive interest in companies associated with artificial intelligence later this month when British chip designer Arm lists on the Nasdaq Index for as much as $US52.3 billion .
But Theo Mass, a tech investor and portfolio manager at Northcape Capital, says it is “very unlikely” retail investors will be able to buy even a small number of shares in the Arm IPO as overwhelming demand means they are reserved for big institutional investors.“There’s a long list of potential cornerstone investors like Apple, Nvidia, Alphabet, AMD and Intel that will get priority,” he adds. “And the overall interest is high as this will be one of the first major tech IPOs in a long time.
As such, an invitation to participate in an IPO might be a warning sign the company is struggling to attract sufficient investors. It’s the high-risk nature of buying into a company with limited information other than that presented by selling entities which means IPOs rarely produce huge winners for investors.Still, some exceptions include software business WiseTech Global which floated on the ASX at $3.35 a share in 2016 before climbing 20 times to about $68 this week; and biotech Telix Pharmaceuticals floated at 65¢ in November 2017 before rocketing 17-fold to around $11.21.