US IPO Weekly Winners & Losers

The IPO market had a choppy week, flipping between down days and up days.

When stocks were down late Monday, I saw this headline:

         Wall Street slips after Powell's hawkish remarks

Then, Tuesday morning when the market was up:

         Wall Street stocks rise on hawkish Fed comments

Opposite effects, attributed to the same cause – and found in the same news site, no less. A good reminder that investing requires a certain comfort with uncertainty. That’s especially true with IPOs.

The US IPO market remains on life support. Just one biotech priced an IPO this past week, the first deal to raise over $50 million in seven weeks. AN2 Therapeutics (Nasdaq: ANTX) closed up +3%.

Mega-unicorn Instacart cut its internal valuation by about 38% to $24 billion. It was refreshing to see the CEO acknowledge the connection between public markets and private valuations. We expect it won't be the last.

The US IPO Index backpedaled -1.4% this past week, while the S&P 500 posted a +1.8% gain. Real estate brokerage Compass reversed its losing streak up +12.7%. Last week’s winner was this week’s loser, as Chinese rideshare platform DiDi slid -20.0%.

Look out for our 1Q 2022 Review of the US IPO market this coming Monday. The slow quarter still held some surprises. Here's a snippet of our summary chart: