Initial public offerings (IPOs) are back on Wall Street.
After two years of subdued IPO activity as inflation spiked following the COVID-19 pandemic, 2025 has been a good year for companies looking to go public on major U.S. exchanges, an analyst told BNN Bloomberg in an interview on Wednesday.
“It (was) not a great environment for companies to publicly debut in both 2023 and 2024. We were all looking at 2025 as the year that public debuts return and indeed it has recently started to pick up,” said Christine Short, head of research and global corporate events at TMX Group.
“This week might actually be one of the biggest weeks in IPOs since 2021, which was a record.”
Short highlighted some of the high-profile companies set to go public in the U.S. this week, including buy now, pay later company Klarna, making its New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) debut Wednesday, as well as crypto exchange Gemini, set to join the Nasdaq on Friday.
“(It’s) a loaded week. Next week, no different, you’re going to see StubHub finally make their public debut, likely on Wednesday,” she said.
“So, things are certainly picking up in (the third quarter). We’ve still got three weeks left obviously but we’re at about 100 IPO announcements in the U.S. and that would make it on target to be the heaviest IPO-announcement quarter going back to (the first quarter of) 2022.”
In addition to the companies that are going public, some of the biggest winners amid the current U.S. IPO resurgence are the big investment banks, said Short.
“Really, every quarter over the last two years, the investment banks have been taking a hit both on IPO and (merger and acquisition) activity,” she said.
“Beginning this year, there were comments within those big bank reports (such as) Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs that said the environment for public debuts is getting a little more favourable.”
Short said that despite an improving economic backdrop, companies are still facing headwinds, including tariff risks and high interest rates, but she noted that a rate cut is expected from the U.S. Federal Reserve at its next meeting in a week, and trade tensions have stabilized somewhat.
“So, the environment is getting better for IPOs, not to mention, markets are at record-highs so that doesn’t hurt either,” she said.
Many of the companies that have tested public markets so far this year have been able to take advantage of the investor enthusiasm that’s pushed stock markets around the world higher in recent months, Short added, which has helped encourage other firms to join the party.
“If you look at the likes of Circle Internet, Figma, Bullish; the crypto exchange that debuted in July, some of these names are up triple digits and far higher than where they priced at,” she said.
“That certainly encourages other names that have been a little more leery of debuting to come out as well.”
