Despite a slow last couple of years, the market for initial public offerings (IPOs) is recovering in 2024. In the past two years, rising inflation and high interest rates led to high funding costs and a volatile market that many companies deemed too risky for a first-time listing. Thus, many IPOs were either postponed or simply cancelled.
In 2023, the number of IPOs globally fell by nearly half from 2021 (to 1,298), a banner year for new issues in recent history. And two thirds of the 154 companies that went public in the U.S. last year have seen their share prices drop below debut prices.
Analysts predict that there will be a small window of market stabilization fit for initial listings this year between the Federal Reserve’s anticipated interest rate cuts and the Presidential election.
Here is a running list of the largest IPOs on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq in 2024 so far:
6/7 Waystar Holding goes public on Nasdaq at $3.7 billion
Founded in: 2017
Main product: Payment software for healthcare organizations
Key executives, investors and other individuals: Waystar is a healthcare software company (not affiliated with the fictional Waystar Royco featured in the HBO show Succession) born out of a merger in 2017 between Navicure and ZirMed. Waystar CEO Matthew Hawkins is a software veteran with a long career holding executive roles at various health care companies. Hawkins led the sale of Waystar to the Swedish private equity EQT and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), which currently own majority stakes in the company. Waystar’s former majority owner Bain Capital retains a minority interest in the company.
5/10: Zeekr went public on NYSE at $5.5 billion
Founded in: 2021
Main Product: Passenger battery electric vehicles (BEV)
Key executives, investors and other individuals: Zeekr is an electric vehicle company owned by Geely, China’s largest non-state-owned automaker chaired by Eric Li, also known as li shufu. Li co-founded Zeekr with An Conghui, who currently serves as Geely’s president. Zeekr was initially launched to compete with Tesla and Chinese EV maker Nio in the domestic market. It later expanded into Europe. Zeekr has so far released five EV models, including the popular Zeekr 001 and Zeekr 007.
Top investors include Amnon Shashua, the founder and CEO of the formerly Intel-owned self-driving company Mobileye. Interestingly, Zeekr has a collaboration with Waymo—a competitor of Mobileye—to develop a robotaxi prpduct. Chinese EV battery maker CATL is another major investor.
5/1: Viking Holdings went public on NYSE at $10.35 billion
Founded in: 1997
Main product: Cruise ships and tourism
Key executives, investors and other individuals: The Swiss-based cruise company is run by its founder and CEO Torstein Hagen. Following Hagen’s assistance with their purchase of a shipping company, two Russian oligarchs sold him four ships at a discounted price, which jumpstarted Viking River Cruises, later rebranded to Viking. Viking operates Viking River Cruises, Viking Ocean Cruises and Viking Expeditions, boasting a fleet of over 70 river cruise ships.
Today, Viking is backed by institutional investors, including minority stakeholders TPG Capital and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), which have a combined stake of 17 percent in Viking’s parent company, MISA Investments Limited. Hagen and his daughter, Karine Hagen, who is also an executive vice president of the company, share a 53.4 percent financial stake and control 87 percent of the voting rights.
4/25: Rubrik went public on NYSE at $5.6 billion
Founded in: 2014
Main product: Cloud data management and data security software
Key executives, investors and other individuals: Microsoft is a principal investor in Rubrik, along with a roster of venture capital firms including Sequoia, Bain, Lightspeed, and Khosla Ventures. Rubrik’s CEO Bipul Sinha and his cofounders Arvind Jain and Arvind Nithrakashyap (who serves as CTO) also hold large chunks of shares. Phoenix Suns player Kevin Durant is also an investor. former CEO of Veritas Software Mark Leslie, Chairman of Microsoft John W.
4/18: Ibotta went public on NYSE at $2.67 billion
Founded in: 2012
Main product: Retail cashback rewards app
Key executives, investors and other individuals: Ibotta is backed by a roster of high-profile CEOs and investors, most notably Elon Musk, George Soros, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and former Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Walmart is also an investor. So is former professional baseball player Billy Beane. Founder and CEO Bryan Leach also held all of Ibotta’s Class B Common Stock prior to the IPO.
3/21: Reddit went public on NYSE at $6.4 billion
Founded in: 2005
Main product: Online discussion forum
Key executives, investors and other individuals: Reddit (RDDT) was founded by college classmates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. In 2006, they sold the company to Condé Nast for $10 million and relinquished most of their equities before leaving the company in 2009. Huffman has since recaptured a substantial portion of shares and returned as CEO in 2015. His predecessor, now OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (who is also an early investor) and several senior executives, including chief operating officer Jennifer Wong, also hold large chunks of company shares.
In addition, Reddit is backed by institutional investors including Advance Magazine Publishers, FMR LLC, Quiet Capital, Tacit Capital, Vy Capital and Chinese tech giant Tencent.
2/1: Amer Sports went public on Nasdaq at $6.3 billion
Founded in: 1950
Main product: Sports equipment
Share price gain since IPO: +17%
Key executives, investors and other individuals: Amer Sports is a Finnish company that owns popular athletic brands like Arc’teryx, Armada and Wilson. Amer Sports is owned by Chinese athletic conglomerate Anta Sports.
The company is led by CEO James Zheng, an executive director at Anta, and chief financial officer Andrew Page, a former executive at Foot Locker and Under Armour.
1/19: Kaspi.kz went public on Nasdaq at $17.5 billion
Founded in: 2008
Main product: Super app
Share price gain since IPO: +23%
Key executives, investors and other individuals: Kaspi.kz is a mobile app developer based in Kazakhstan. The company was founded by Mikheil Lomtadze and Vyacheslav Kim. Lomtadze serves as the company’s CEO. Its mobile app operates like a super app, similar to China’s WeChat, that provides a wide range of services, from banking to payments to tax filing.
Kaspi.kz has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since 2020 and is also listed on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange and Kazakhstan’s Astana International Exchange.
Shein confidentially filed to go public in November 2023
Founded in: 2008
Main product: Online shopping site
Target valuation: $80 billion to $90 billion
Key executives, investors and other individuals: Shein was founded in 2008 in mainland China as an e-commerce logistics company by Sky Xu (also known as Xu Yangtian and Chris Xu). Little is known about the elusive founder, but he boasts a net worth of $21 billion, making him one of the richest people in China.
Xu had two early co-founders: entrepreneur Wang Xiaohu, who owned 45 percent of the company, and Li Peng, a consultant with a 10 percent stake. Xu reportedly abruptly dropped both of them in 2011 when he decided to rebrand the business as a wedding dress retailer called Sheinside. Shein’s current leadership team consists of executive chairman Donald Tang and vice chairman Marcelo Claure.
Panera Bread confidentially filed to go public in November 2023
Founded in: 1987
Main product: Bakery-café fast food restaurants
Target valuation: $10 billion
Key executives, investors and other individuals: Panera Bread was publicly traded for 25 years until being taken private by JAB Holding Company in 2017 for $7.5 billion. JAB attempted to take the company public again in 2021 via reverse merging with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) when SPAC mergers were a popular path to go public among tech companies. The deal eventually fell through. In 2021, Panera Bread merged with Einstein Bros. Bagels and Caribou Coffee and formed a new parent company called Panera Brands, led by José Alberto Dueñas, the former CEO of Einstein Bros. Bagels.