IPOs flourish as market shows appetite for tech stocks
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Photo: JFrog
Snowflake shares more than doubled on Wednesday, after having the biggest software IPO in history, while JFrog also posted strong first-day gains.
Why it matters: The moves show that Wall Street's appetite for new tech stocks remains significant, with concerns about both the pandemic and high valuations taking a back seat.
Driving the news: Snowflake, a Silicon Valley cloud data warehousing company, on Tuesday night raised $3.4 billion, making it the largest software IPO ever. Its shares more than doubled, closing regular trading at $253.93, up $133.93, or more than 111%.
- JFrog, which helps companies manage their software updates, saw its shares rise 47% during its first day of trading, to nearly $65 per share, after raising around $500 million in its IPO.
"When you come with the right business and technology that addresses real pain in the market, the market is welcoming," JFrog CEO Shlomi Ben Haim told Axios.
Yes, but: Snowflake and JFrog are still trading at eye-popping valuations.
- Ben Haim said he focused on working with the company's bankers to find the right IPO pricing. "From that point, the market will decide where the price per share goes," he said.
Between the lines: While JFrog was planning to go public before COVID-19 arrived, the pandemic forced the company to do its roadshow entirely virtually. The company's founders and executives did enjoy an in-person, masked, socially distanced outdoor celebration in the parking lot of its Sunnyvale, Calif. headquarters.
Our thought bubble: These IPOs are soaring during a bizarre and unprecedented economic moment: The real economy is on the rails and unemployment is stratospheric, but the Fed's cash spigot is locked open, and because software is eating the world, investors see it as a good place for their money.
What's next: Sumo Logic priced its IPO Wednesday night at $22 per share, raising upwards of $325 million. Its stock is slated to begin trading today.
Go deeper: Early Snowflake investors talk about the beginning of the business
