Tech IPO market collapsed in 2022; next year doesn’t look much better

The Nasdaq MarketSite in New York.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Following a record-smashing tech IPO year in 2021 that featured the debuts of electric car maker Rivian, restaurant software company Toast, cloud software vendors GitLab and HashiCorp and stock-trading app Robinhood, 2022 has been a complete dud.

The only notable tech offering in the U.S. this year was Intel’s spinoff of Mobileye, a 23-year-old company that makes technology for self-driving cars and was publicly traded until its acquisition in 2017. Mobileye raised just under $1 billion, and no other U.S. tech IPO pulled in even $100 million, according to FactSet.

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In 2021, by contrast, there were at least 10 tech IPOs in the U.S. that raised $1 billion or more, and that doesn’t account for the direct listings of Roblox, Coinbase and Squarespace, which were so well-capitalized they didn’t need to bring in outside cash.

The narrative completely flipped when the calendar turned, with investors bailing on risk and the promise of future growth, in favor of profitable businesses with balance sheets deemed strong enough to weather an economic downturn and sustained higher interest rates. Pre-IPO companies altered their plans after seeing their public market peers plunge by 50%, 60%, and in some cases, more than 90% from last year’s highs.

In total, IPO deal proceeds plummeted 94% in 2022 — from $155.8 billion to $8.6 billion — according to Ernst & Young’s IPO report published in mid-December. As of the report’s publication date, the fourth quarter was on pace to be the weakest of the year.

With the Nasdaq Composite headed for its steepest annual slump since 2008 and its first back-to-back years underperforming the S&P 500 since 2006-2007, tech investors are looking for signs of a bottom.

But David Trainer, CEO of stock research firm New Constructs, says investors first need to get a grip on reality and get back to valuing emerging tech companies based on fundamentals and not far-out promises.

As tech IPOs were flying in 2020 and 2021, Trainer was waving the

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City of Austin doesn’t track technology it purchases, audit finds

AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Metropolis of Austin doesn’t know how substantially it spends on know-how every single calendar year and doesn’t retain a citywide stock of the know-how it owns. These are just a couple of the results in a new town auditor’s report.

The audit, introduced to several city council users this 7 days, notes there are several problems with the city’s course of action to buy technological know-how.  

Planning for purchases is mainly left to personal departments and not carried out continuously or coordinated, according to the audit. The city’s process to obtain technology typically involves many events, like city council, the Communications & Technologies Management Section, the Company Obtaining Office environment and other metropolis departments.

Auditors seemed at the city’s know-how buying procedure amongst 2019 and 2021. They paint a photograph of a dysfunctional system which lacks interaction or knowledge of what the town already owns.

“Imagine you are dwelling in a residence with four other roommates who do not talk much. Every of you goes to the grocery shop and buys foodstuff, but none of you has a checklist or understands what is in the pantry in advance of you go,” auditors wrote metaphorically. “When every person gets household, how substantially foodstuff did you buy that was now in the residence? How a lot of of you bought the similar issue? This is like how the City buys engineering besides the City’s approach is on a much larger sized scale.”

The audit thorough examples of city departments purchasing technological innovation that does not fulfill or align with the city’s needs.

In one occasion, a section spent $36,000 on tablets for staff members to use in the subject. After getting the tablets, the office uncovered they would not function with the department’s software, and the division shelved them, in accordance to the audit.

The audit references another example the place a section desired to obtain a way to monitor its inventory and the city’s Communications

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