Domo CEO Josh James, center, celebrates his company's debut on the public markets in June.
- The number and value of tech public offerings jumped in the first half of this year, compared with last year.
- Investor demand and the eagerness of some startups to go public are driving the market for tech IPOs.
- The market should stay strong through the second half of this year and into 2019, according to tech bankers who spoke with Business Insider.
The market for public offerings in the tech sector popped in the first half of this year and could get even better in the second half and on into next year.
But you'll likely have to wait have to wait until next year for the biggest of the so-called unicorns - the private tech companies valued at $1 billion or more, a group that includes Uber, WeWork, and AirBnB - to hit the market.
That's the word from some of the investment bankers who cater to the tech industry and work with companies that are preparing to go public. Investors are eager for new offerings from high-growth firms, while at the same time many companies are itching to go public after many years of being private, they say.
"The tech sector's going to be busy," said Brad Miller, global head of equity syndicate at UBS. He continued: "We're pretty bullish on the sector going forward."
2018 has already been a good year for tech IPOs
It's already been a good market for tech IPOs. In the first half of the year, 24 tech companies went public, according PwC. That's already more than the number that debuted in all of 2016, and is 11 more than the number that went public in the first half of last year.
Jenny Cheng/BI Graphics
And the market valuation of the companies that have hit the public markets in the first half of this year - $8.7 billion - is up 77% from the same period last year, according to PwC. That figure doesn't include Spotify, which went public in a non-traditional way. Had its $26.5 billion valuation at its market debut been included, the total value of IPOs in the first half would have been seven times greater than in the same period last year.
Jenny Cheng/BI Graphics
Among the companies that have debuted this year are Domo, DocuSign, and Dropbox.
After the tech IPO market ended last year on a strong note, industry insiders were expecting the momentum to carry into this year.
"The first half of the year hasn't disappointed," said John Chirico, co-head of capital markets origination for the Americas at Citi.
Investors are hungry for growth
What's helping drive the market is hunger on the part of investors for the ability to invest in fast-growing firms. On average, tech companies see a significant rise in their stock in the 30 days following their IPOs, the tech bankers say. That kind of immediate return can help boost the portfolios of institutional investors.
So they're demanding more such companies, because they're not getting that kind of quick-paced growth elsewhere. And investors are more than willing, for now, to trade revenue growth for profits.
Investors are being "compensated for taking risks in new companies," said Chirico. So, he continued, they're "asking to see more private companies."
Part of what's helping to drive the market - and increase valuations for new tech firms - is that investors feel like they have a better grasp on the risks faced by the companies that have gone public lately, Chrico said. Earlier this decade, as smartphones were coming to the fore, there was much more uncertainty about many of the companies that were going public, he said. It wasn't clear how many people would eventually use mobile devices or what kinds of things they would do with them. It also wasn't clear whether companies that had established themselves on the web, like Facebook, would be able to make the transition to mobile devices.
By contrast, many of the tech companies that are going public now are going after established markets, Chirico said. The question is no longer whether there's a market for their products, but how much of the market they can gobble up and how effectively the established companies in the sector will respond.
"These business models are well-understood execution risks," he said. "Investors love that. They can assess that."
Many tech companies are eager to go public
But the market is also being driven by the eagerness of tech companies to go public, the bankers say. There's plenty of private capital still floating around, and at least some of the prospective companies are generating cash, so many don't necessarily need to hit the public markets to grow or stay float.
However, the stock market has been on a long bull run, one that will end sooner or later. There's the sense among some of them that they should go out while the public window is still open, Miller said. After being private for years, there's also the feeling among those companies that it's time to hit the public markets, he said. Such a move could help those companies' employees realize the value of their stock options and help the companies themselves make acquisitions using their shares.
"It's just the next phase for some of these companies," Miller said.
But don't expect to see the most prominent of the still-private companies hit the market just yet. Those companies still have access to private capital and don't have any urgency to go public. But several of those companies are reportedly preparing for it.
That could set up 2019 to be a big year for IPOs.
"It feels like there's lot of activity that we're likely to see in the second half of this year, going into next year," Chirico said.