Thursday, April 1, 2010

First Quarter IPOs Beat All Of 2009

IPOs in the first three months of the year handily beat all of 2009, as eight U.S., venture backed companies raised $711M in offerings, according to an analysis by Dow JOnes VentureSource today. According to Dow Jones, those eight IPOs matched the same number of IPOs throughout all of 2009, and made it the most active quarter for venture-backed company IPOs since Q4 of 2007. In addition to the IPOs, Dow Jones reported there were 77 acquisitions worth $4 billion for the first quarter, roughly on par with Q1 of last year, where 77 companies were acquired for a total of $3.4 billion. The firm tallied 44 venture backed companies currently in IPO registration. The IPO activity in Q1 was a notable improvement from last year, when exactly zero venture-backed companies went public. The firms that did make it to the markets this year, however, had a long wait: Dow Jones reported that it took a median of 10.4 years, and $156M in venture capital for them to get liquidity.

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