AnalytixInsight

While Canadian capital markets slowed this week after a very busy previous week, in the week ahead, we’re looking forward to the trading debut of Sophic client, Luckbox (LUCK-TSXV). Emerge Ecommerce (ECOM-TSXV) is also expected to start trading this coming week. Meanwhile, in the USA, AirBnB, DoorDash and C3.AI, all had very strong trading debuts as expected by most. At the same time, IPOs of Roblox and Affirm seem delayed to 2021, with speculation that these companies may try a different approach than the traditional IPO in order to avoid massive IPO pops, which do not benefit companies issuing new stock. Some alternatives could include direct listing, auction IPOs or going public via a SPAC. At the same time, there seems to be increasing chatter about unsustainable valuations.

This past week was perhaps one of the most tech capital markets news intensive weeks we have witnessed in a while. In Canada, there was plenty of activity in public and private markets, as well as M&A with MindBeacon, Dye&Durham, theScore, BlackBerry, Lightspeed, Benevity, Element AI & PayBright. In the USA, a lot of attention was focused on Salesforce-Slack acquisition, at a 50% premium, however, there were at least three more high profile acquisitions, as well as a few more high profile IPOs including Airbnb & DoorDash.

We witnessed another week of decent small tech capital markets activity in Canada. In the USA, with the Thanksgiving shortened holiday week, another massive Stripe up-round, Metromile’s SPAC and Discord’s financing were perhaps the most topical news items.