Two of the most successful unicorns are driving the 2019 IPO market. Pinterest and Zoom are each set to price ahead shares of their respective initial public offerings (IPOs) on Thursday, April 18th, 2019.
Pinterest will be trading on the New York Stock Exchange trading under the ticker sign PINS, while Zoom will trade on Nasdaq under the ZM ticker sign.
The two tech companies follow the path of some of very well known tech giants that filed to go public. Lyft, the ride-sharing service company, went public to see its shares go up in value only to experience a near 20% when investors started doubting the company’s ability to actually be profitable and generate revenue. Such concern is raised for many “unicorns”, as their valuations often do not reflect their ability to generate profit.
Zoom, the US videoconferencing company, has raised its share price range from $33 per share to $35 this week. The previous envisaged range was $28 – $32 per share. With the new price range ahead of the IPO, the company’s valuation stands at around $9 billion.
One of the more interesting facts about Zoom, however, is that the company has actually managed to generate substantial revenue of around $330 million ahead of its IPO.
While Zoom is increasing its price range, the other tech company that is to go public, Pinterest, is actually doing the opposite thing. Initially, Pinterest was valued at $12 billion, but its price range of $15 – $17 per share actually lowered the valuation by around $2 billion. There is no clear information on what the price range will look like, but according to press, Pinterest might raise the range in due course.
Pinterest reported $756 million in revenue in 2018, as stated in their IPO prospectus. However, Pinterest still recorded a net loss of $63 million.
In addition to Zoom and Pinterest, Uber is expected to also go public, and again, according to press, the valuation of Uber is expected to be around $100 billion. This wave of tech “unicorns” is going strong in 2019.