Hungry for some unicorn... A trio of companies went public last week with Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) — They all had reached $1B+ valuations when they were private, and they all rely on the internet to disrupt something. Of the more than 60 IPOs so far this year, a dozen have popped by over 50% on Day 1 of trading. Crowdstrike, Fiverr, and Chewy are into that trend.
90%, 71%, and 59%... those are the percentages of the week — They're the boosts in share prices on the first day of trading for last week's big three:
- CrowdStrike: The struggle with hacking is real. CrowdStrike won street cred as the first to notice the DNC's breach by Russia before the '16 election. Now, it's worth $12.6B (according to its market capitalization) as it defends business from cybercrime.
- Fiverr: The freelancer's Uber, Fiverr connects you with gig workers who have BAs, MAs, or PhD-qualified jobs. Think graphic design, SEO help, or language translation, without full-time commitment.
- Chewy: The online everything store for pets, Chewy was bought by PetSmart in 2017 for just $3.4B. Now its parent company's letting it off-leash, and it's worth $14B after Friday's surge. Thank "pet humanization," because our generation can afford puppies, not babies (FYI, Chewy sends condolence notes if your Fido passes away).
The highest profile unicorns have struggled... The decade-long countdown for Uber and Lyft's IPOs burned out the hype — Both of their stocks are still "underwater," aka their share price is lower than on IPO-day. But the stocks without household names are living their best lives. This puts still-private Airbnb and WeWork in an awkward situation. To IPO or to wait?