The past 18 months have been a veritable killing field for IPOs.
Only six venture-backed public offerings made it to the U.S. market in 2008 and five during the first half of 2009.
"I think we will see some filings" this year with an increase by the middle of 2010, says PricewaterhouseCooper's D. Timothy Carey.
But now there is more chatter in corporate boardrooms of a comeback getting underway. This appears to be particularly true among clean-tech companies, which might expect to ride the coattails of the public’s fascination with solutions to global warming.
Big name companies such as Tesla and Solyndra are obvious candidates. (I have no specially knowledge that either has plans.)
But it seem clear that after a first half of the year spent worried about survival, talk among board members has turned to public offerings, says D. Timothy Carey, clean-tech leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“I think we will see some filings” this year with an increase by the middle of 2010, Carey said in an interview.
“I’m not here predicting we’re going to have a robust IPO market any time soon,” he said at an SVASE “Shaking the Money Tree” event in Palo Alto on Thursday evening. But there is a thaw going on.
A thaw also appears to be occurring with venture investing as well. During the first quarter of this year, VCs were consumed with steadying their own portfolios. By the second quarter, they began looking around at new deals, but the pace of investing remained low.
“My view is the second half is going to be better,” says Carey. A lot will depend on how fast federal loan guarantees and grants tied to the stimulus spending get into the market.
Smart grid and transportation seem to be the two biggest opportunities this year, he added.
