The New Rules of the IPO
From Airbnb to Stripe — Which Companies Will Actually IPO in 2020?
Nearly 200 companies are expected to go public in 2020. Here are the ones to watch.
This story is part of The New Rules of the IPO, a multi-part special report.
Illustrations: James Clapham
Last year, 159 companies made initial public offerings in the U.S. — a decent number, though hardly a spectacular one. If 2019 public offerings had a theme, it was the year of the disappointing unicorn. Uber and Lyft both went public, and both now trade well below their offering price. Even more notoriously, WeWork scuttled its IPO plans completely — a rather drastic comedown from an offering that would have valued the company at $48 billion. According to PitchBook, the total value of the year’s public offerings was $33 billion, a drop of nearly 30% compared to 2018.
All this casts a bit of a shadow over 2020—but it turns out, there’s still plenty of billion-dollar plus activity in that shadow. Here’s what we’re keeping an eye on in the year ahead.
