IPO Activity Tapers Off Slightly as Summer Comes to a Close

​For the month of August, nine U.S. companies made debuts on American stock exchanges, raising a combined $1.88 billion, according to data from Pitchbook. The figures are down slightly from July, when there were 15 IPOs totaling $2.08 billion in capital raised. As for the calendar year-to-date, $25.6 billion has been raised through 117 IPOs, up from the $22.7 billion raised in the same period of 2017. 

According to Renaissance Capital’s U.S. IPO Index as of August 30th, IPO stocks have slightly underperformed the S&P 500 this year. The index, which tracks a basket of the most liquid newly trading public companies, is up 9.49%, 42 basis points lower than the S&P 500.

The business-to-consumer industry had five of the nine IPOs in August, raising $1.33 billion in capital. This marks the first month of the year that healthcare hasn’t been the leading industry in terms of capital raised from public issuances, ($66 million in capital raised among two IPOs). In 2018, financial services have also had busy IPO activity. The industry is responsible for 18.8% of IPOs in the U.S. and $5.46 billion in capital raised.

The highlights from our weekly IPO market updates during August 2018 included:

• Week 1: Sonos completes IPO, Arlo spins off from Netgear, Elanco files for spin-off from Eli Lilly
• Week 2: Vaccinex begins trading, Bitmain Technologies files for Asia IPO
• Week 3: Amalgamated Bank closes IPO, Aridis debuts on NASDAQ
• Week 4: Saudi Aramco pulls IPO plans, Bionano Genetics shares debut trading, Eventbrite seeks IPO approval