Just 28 tech companies entered the US public markets in 2015, and half of those now trade below their IPO price
Katie Roof / TechCrunch :
Context & Ripple Effects
Katie Roof's year-end tally closes out a drought that was visible by June, when Fortune counted just seven VC-backed tech IPOs and called 2015 the slowest such year since the financial crisis. The full-year figure of 28 US tech listings — half now trading below their offer price — confirms the window never reopened.
A Mattermark analysis in January found the same cohort closed their first days an average of 30% below the debut price, so the weakness is not just post-IPO drift but pricing at issuance. Three years later Dealogic counted 38 billion-dollar-plus tech IPOs, the most since 2000 — making 2015 the trough of a cycle that has since swung hard both ways.
First-order effects
- The 14 issuers trading underwater leave their underwriting banks with a damaged track record just as fee-starved equity desks head into a thinner 2016 pipeline.
- Venture and growth-stage investors in companies that stayed private face weaker comparable valuations for marking their portfolios and pricing future rounds.
Second-order effects
- When the market reopened in 2018, issuers responded to memories of debuts like these by selling smaller stakes — Dealogic found startups floating just 17% of themselves on average — and roughly 44% raised secondaries within 180 days to cash out without enlarging the offering.
- Private capital absorbed supply that public markets declined: with only seven VC-backed tech listings by mid-2015, late-stage rounds and secondary platforms became the default liquidity route for companies that would previously have gone public.
Third-order effects
- The 2015 trough, the 2018 record, and 2022's collapse — when Ernst & Young measured US tech IPO proceeds falling 94% from $155.8B to $8.6B and FactSet counted no $1B-plus deal all year — sketch a structurally cyclical listing window rather than a steadily open one.
- If the pattern holds, tech companies treat going public as an opportunistic event timed to windows rather than a milestone on a fixed path, which concentrates public-market exposure in whatever cohort lists during each brief opening.
The trend: Tech IPO activity is swinging between multi-year droughts and short floods as private capital substitutes for public listings, leaving each listing window's cohort to set the tone for the next.