Endeavor cancels its IPO the night before it was supposed to happen
They're supposed to be celebratory... IPOs feel like graduation or getting your Instagram account verified. But 2019 — the year of the tech IPO — has been the opposite. Talent agency Endeavor just canceled its IPO less than 24 hours before it was supposed to happen. This is the entertainment company that repped Denzel and owns half of Ultimate Fighting Championship.
There are fewer rainbows out there for unicorns lately... That's why Endeavor dipped out. The share price that a company IPOs at matters to its existing investors — they own stock in the private company and want to eventually sell once it becomces public. Here's what's happened to stocks lately once they IPO:
- Uber & Lyft are down 31% and 43% as investors wonder if they'll ever become profitable.
- SmileDirectClub and Slack both had painful starts, down 36% and 42%.
- Peloton is only 1 day in but already sweating.
- WeWork is a whole different category — Its valuation was $47B the last time it raised money from private investors, and could be re-priced down to a $15B valuation (or less) when/if it IPOs.
Private markets were hype, public markets are reality... In 2017, SoftBank scrapped together $100B from insanely wealthy people, companies, and countries to invest huge sums in startups. The venture capital firm gave Uber, WeWork, and Slack gigantic checks to fund their growth, also driving their valuations up. But Wall Street's been more skeptical, slashing those valuations by hammering their stock prices. Now unicorns might wait to IPO until their chests grow profit hairs.