INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Joanna Glasner
Contributor
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Boston-area startups are on pace to overtake
NYC venture totals
Home run exits happen stealthily for biotech
Unicorn exits are taking flight.
With the IPO window wide
open, an apparent record number of venture-backed companies privately valued over $1 billion have launched public offerings this year
Crunchbase data shows23 unicorn IPOsglobally so far in 2018, well outpacing full-year totals for 2016 and 2017.
Collectively, this year
newly public unicorns are doing pretty well too
Most priced shares around or above expectations
We&re also seeing a lot of impressive aftermarket gains
At least six are currently valued at more than $10 billion.
Meanwhile, unicorn MA volumes are chugging along as well, with at least11 deals
Big transactions like Walmart $16 billion acquisition of Flipkart and Microsoft $7.5 billion purchase of GitHub have helped boost the
totals.
It all adds up to some enormous numbers
We&ll delve into those in more detail below, focusing on year-over-year comparisons, geographic breakdown, biggest exits and more.
How 2018
compares to prior years
First off, a bit of context
A lot of startup-related metrics are on track to hit multi-year or record highs in 2018
These are lofty times forsupergiant funding rounds, venture capitalfundraising andunicorn investment, to name a few
Given that pattern, it not surprising to see a pickup in unicorn exits too, including some really big names like Xiaomi, Spotify and
Dropbox.
That said, if one focuses on anticipated exits, as opposed to the ones that already occurred, even this year phenomenal IPO streak
may seem comparatively humdrum
There mounting excitement around the potential for even bigger offerings next year fromUber,Airbnb, Didi Chuxing and others.
If markets
don''t implode in the next few months, and at least some of these household names make it to market, it likely 2019 will be an even bigger
year for unicorn IPOs than 2018
Unfortunately, however, we don''t have hard data on the future, so we&re left comparing this year to the prior two in the chart below:
As
you can see, we&re already well ahead of last year totals
On the IPO front, not only are the 2018 unicorn offerings more numerous, they&re also bigger
In 2017, out of 16 unicorn IPOs, there were two at initial valuations above $10 billion (Snap and online insurer ZhongAn)
So far this year, there have been five.
Geography of unicorn exits
The exiting unicorns are also a geographically diverse bunch, with the
United States and China accounting for the lion share and Europe trailing a distant third.
In the chart below, we look at the geographic
breakdown in more detail:
While the United States produced the largest number of unicorn exits, they weren''t the biggest
Notably, this year most valuable IPOs and MA deal involved companies based in Europe and Asia.
Of the six 2018 debuts currently valued at
$10 billion or more, detailed below, only one, Dropbox, is a United States company
In the chart below, we look at who topped the rankings:
Adding it up
The grand tally of 2018 exits provides a clear counterpoint to
skeptics (your author included), who questioned whether fast-growing unicorn populations and valuations would hold up with acquirers and
public market investors.
It appears prices are keeping up nicely
The vast majority of United States unicorn exits this year, for instance, were close to or above private market valuations
Among United States IPOs the onlybig fizzlewas Domo
While Dropbox looked like a &down round IPO& at first, strong aftermarket performance has the company above its highest reported private
valuation.
The year largest unicorn IPO — China Xiaomi — also managed to slightly top its last reportedprivate valuation, even after
pricing shares for its June IPO far below initial projections.
All these giant exits add up
The unicorns that went public this year currently have a collective market capitalization north of $200 billion
Add in roughly $45 billion from MA deals, and we&re talking close to a quarter of a trillion (!) dollars in post-exit value.
These big exits
come as investors continue to funnel record sums into high-valuation private companies
So far this year, investors have poured more than $200 billion into venture and growth-stage startups, withmore than $70 billion going into
companies already valued at $1 billion or more.
In sum, we&re seeing big numbers all around — going in as investments and coming out as
Eventually, all parties wind down
But for now, this one rages on.
