New York: Private companies are prepared to continue holding off on going public through next year if the market doesn’t improve, said one of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s top technology bankers.
Many of the bank’s clients that are candidates for initial public offerings raised private capital in 2020 and 2021 when it was abundant, Matt Gibson, co-head of the bank’s global technology, media and telecom group, said Friday in a Bloomberg Television interview. Those firms showed the financial discipline - preserving capital and cutting costs - to comfortably extend their IPO runway this year.
“Most of the clients that we have had the ability to wait this year and even wait next year if they need to,” Gibson said. “The good news is that they took the steps they needed to take when times were good.”
Amid volatility and shrinking valuations, the bank’s advice to most of its clients this year has been to wait, he said.
Gibson said the bank’s clients now more or less acknowledge the new valuation environment. “They’re looking to see one or two IPOs that get out there, price within the normal range that they expect and then trade well in the aftermarket,” he said.
A few companies will likely test the market in the first quarter, he said.
“We don’t expect 2023 to be 2021 again, as much as we’d like it to be, but we expect a vast improvement over 2022.”
