The initial public offering market may have cooled off slightly as Wall Street moved into September, with only a few companies pricing amid the shortened U.S. holiday week. But filing activity has been red hot, with several companies poised to list any day now. Notably, a few tech companies are also vying to be Silicon Valley's first tech IPO for 2020, a feat that has taken much longer than anticipated due to the volatile headwinds that have plague this year's market.
Several companies are set to potential launch during the shorten holiday week, including Silicon Valley's software provider Asana, PC and gaming hardware designer Corsair Gaming, cloud-based software unicorn Snowflake, on-demand cloud management solutions provider Sumo Logic, and 3D video game development platfrom Unity Software. Other companies that could price very soon include Google-backed (NASDAQ:GOOGL) telehealth platform Amwell, software provider for construction projects Bentley Systems and software tools for app development provider JFrog, prescription drug comparison platform GoodRx, largest manufacturer of fresh food and beverage packaging in North America Pactiv Evergreen, and data analytics platform Palantir. Asana and Palantir plan to debut via direct listings.
According to CNBC's Bob Pisani, 2020 may be the biggest year for the IPO market since Alibaba's (NYSE: BABA) blockbuster public debut back in 2014. Currently, 111 newly public comings so far this year have raised $37.8 billion, almost half of the $85 billion raised in 2014. With plenty of billion dollar companies slated to publicly price in upcoming weeks, as well as Airbnb's listing that is expected by the end of the year, 2020 may be able to overtake 2014's market.
Pisani predicts that 2020 is going to be a bigger year than previously expected due to explosive stock market growth, the strong upcoming pipeline, and the outperformance of recently public companies. Moreover, the Renaissance Capital IPO ETF (NYSE: IPO), which tracks an index of the largest IPOs within the last two years, is up over 50% for its year-to-date, outperforming the S&P 500 Index (NYSE: SPY), Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA), and even tech heavy Nasdaq Composite Index (NASDAQ: QQQ).