Ibotta debuted at $117 per share on Thursday, beginning its journey as a publicly traded company. This is a significant increase from the IPO price of $88 and also an increase from the proposed price of $76 to $84 per share.
And this pop comes even as the company expanded its offering earlier this week, with existing shareholders increasing the offering by just under 1 million shares.
Although the stock price has not continued to rise in early trading, it remains stable above the IPO price of approximately $100 at the time of writing.
The company “left money for very bullish investors” [expanding] “Third-party platforms beyond just Walmart have become Ibotta's key partners and account for much of its current revenue,” said Nicholas Smith, senior research analyst at pre-IPO research firm Renaissance Capital. . Given that the company started trading well above its IPO price today, some critics argue it's leaving too much money on the table and could have raised more on its own. I might.
The company's successful debut marks the third major tech IPO in the U.S. this year, and the third in a row to see prices soar and quickly rise. It's also the first of two of his technology products scheduled to go public this month, with his Rubrik, a data management and security company, planning to list its stock next week. Both social media companies and data center connectivity hardware companies have followed Reddit and Astera Labs in exiting the private markets as they continue to trade above their IPO prices.
Investor enthusiasm for Ibotta shows “there's a renewed appetite for IPOs, especially in the technology space,” Smith said.
But don't pop the champagne just yet, because the tech IPO market is heating up again. Ibotta has shifted its focus to enterprise sales rather than a direct-to-consumer model, which has helped the company achieve recent profitability. His IPOs of classic tech companies tend to focus on tech companies that are still in growth mode and are running deep losses.
Rubrics may be a better test of IPO intent. The company's products are in the data management and security space, and the company is very unprofitable and has slower growth than Ibotta. That said, cloud has a strong revenue story to tell. A successful debut could lead to more unprofitable unicorns venturing into the public markets.
Smith agreed, saying Rubrik's upcoming IPO will be an “even bigger test” for the tech industry debut “given its current weak financial position.”
We'll find out next week.