2020 IPO report card: Are tech’s newest public companies meeting expectations?

Published October 12, 2020

As the American election looms and the IPO cycle slows some, it’s a good time to review how well the public offerings we have seen thus far have performed.

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Welcome to a Monday morning data rundown discussing how well the latest-stage startups that went public this year have performed after their first day. We’ll be awarding letter grades for post-IPO performance as well, because we can.

So, how did Snowflake do compared to Vroom, both stacked next to JFrog and One Medical? Let’s find out.

Ranking 2020’s IPOs

The fine folks at my former publication Crunchbase News have a running list of 2020 IPOs, which will help us not miss any names. Of course, we’re not going to include every possible deal; there have been some marginal debuts that we can leave behind.

But, the majors matter. So let’s get into them now:

Snowflake: It priced above its raised range. Then it went up sharply. From an IPO price of $120 per share, Snowflake is worth $250 per share today. That’s so expensive, compared to the data-focused Snowflake’s revenue, that I can hardly figure out what the hell its price means. The company’s valuation got so rich that we wrote that all tech companies should go public to take advantage of the rich market. This year’s standout IPO. A+.
Unity: Unity’s IPO was a source of wonder for those curious about the economics of the gaming world. For us finance dorks, it was also a right corker. We were impressed. So were investors. After setting a $34 and $42 per share IPO range, Unity raised it to $44 and $48 per share. Then it went public at $52 per share. Today it’s worth $94.50 per share, or around $25 billion. It was priced at $6 billion, give or take, in its final private round. A huge win of an IPO. A.