AnalytixInsight

This past holiday shortened week saw a lower level of Canadian capital markets activity than we’ve all grown accustomed to over the past few months. As we head into the short US trading week, and the summer, the consensus seems to be that the recent high volume of capital markets activity may slow down. That said, Robinhood filed for its much anticipated IPO, on the back of a large US$70 million FINRA fine and other regulatory concerns, including that the CEO had federal prosecutors serve a search warrant on his cellphone. Some have argued that Robinhood’s IPO could mark the top for “meme” stocks — time will tell. Even as regulatory risks seem to mount for large tech companies, a D.C. federal court on Monday dismissed two antitrust cases brought against Facebook last year in a major setback for federal and state regulators. On the streaming media front, both Apple and Disney appear to be running into some headwinds, as evidenced by a few data points. CRISPR injected into blood treated a genetic disease for first time. In a medical first, researchers injected a CRISPR drug into the blood of people born with a disease that causes fatal nerve and heart disease and shown that in three of them it nearly shut off production of toxic protein by their livers, which could herald a new phase fore this exciting new technology.

As we’ve been pointing out in this column for a while, Canadian tech VC and public markets activity has been witnessing a major increase in activity – unlike anything we’ve ever witnessed in our over a decade on the sell-side. The Globe & Mail recently pointed out that Canadian VC funding records for the second consecutive quarter in Q2, puts the sector on track to surpass the all-time high for a single year, set during the dot-com bubble a generation ago. Public markets are likely not far behind either, and we have witnessed very strong IPO in activity in Canada in the recent past. The Senate passed Bill C-218, legalizing single-event sports betting in Canada – we expect busy capital market on the back of this bill, and have already witnessed the first signs, with Fansunite’s (FANS-CSE) equity offering announced just hours after the bill was passed. In the USA, Robhinhood’s much anticipated public markets debut appears a bit delayed, likely owing to its crypto business drawing questions from the US SEC. Aside from this delay, last week was very busy for US tech IPOs, even as there appear to be new privacy, and big tech related regulatory questions nearly every day in the USA and Europe.