NYSE President Says IPO Market Is Opening Up

So some others might have opinions about this, but overall, the survey that you've gotten so far, from what you've heard, I know you're still in the middle of it. What have you heard so far? What we've heard is there are a lot of things to consider, mainly on the infrastructure side, which is not really a surprise. It's why we sought out to get feedback before something like this was introduced by the SRO community. We wanted to understand all of the pieces of the ecosystem that would need to fit together if we're going to introduce this responsibly. So the feedback so far hasn't really surprised us. There's a lot of parts of the value chain to consider. So realistically, if you did want to do something like this, how long would it take to actually set up that type of infrastructure? There's a variety of things that would need to be considered. Most importantly, we would need to talk to our regulators about it, not just us, our clearing house DTC would also need to consider that with the regulators to the extent that they would remain open for that 24 hour trading. It's interesting because there does appear to be demand here. Lisa mentioned Steve Cohen's venture wants to do something like this. Do you have any sense of idea of where that demand is coming from, the type of person that wants to be trading 24/7. So I don't know that it's really 24 hours a day. I think what has started most of the man, what's really triggered most of the demand has been the rise of the ETF. And if you look at the basket in some of the ETF, particularly the international ETF, they're not just securities that are listed on domestic exchange. So from a risk management standpoint, it would make sense that you would want to manage your risk in the underlying baskets when those domestic markets are open. Fair enough. Now now when when it comes to IPOs, we started this year, you and many folks were excited for 2024 that it would be a big year. So many people's hopes have been dashed. I think the volume is somewhere still near a decade's low when it comes to IPO volume. Are you still hopeful for this year? I absolutely AM and actually I'm incredibly, really optimistic given the amount of proceeds that have been raised so far in the markets, 14 billion so far has been raised in the US markets. Through last Friday, we've had about 25 operating company IPOs on the New York Stock Exchange. That's two times the amount of proceeds raised year to date versus last year and three times versus 2022. So the markets are definitely opening up and what I'm personally excited about is those companies we've welcomed have not just gotten large deals done many times they have upsized their deals. They've priced either at the high end or above the range and then they're seeing that pop, the 20% pop when their stock opens. So it's been a really exciting, particularly Q2, really exciting time where we're seeing about two IP OS a week at NYSA. Well, Reddit is a great example of a company that IPO, a lot of fanfare around it, but a company like Reddit, it's a mature company, it's a quality company, investors feel safe with it. Is there room for anything outside of that? So you have seen some more growth oriented companies go, but importantly as you mentioned, they've had a a path to profitability. So I think that's really what is getting valued. It's why those companies that either are profitable or have a path to profitability are getting rewarded. You look at a company like Viking which is the largest IPO of the year, it's a household name. I had so many people say to me, I can't believe this company is in public already given that many of us have enjoyed their cruises whatever the case may be. But then you've also got great company, Japanese emerging companies around cyber like Rubric who just IPO D on us. A couple of weeks ago, even with the uptick in demand, frequent data came out that there's still 3 point trillion dollars of companies of money tied up in aging companies that haven't gone public. There still is this impetus to stay private for longer. Do are you concerned with as companies stay private for longer that they found alternative paths to going public and just that norm that we used to saw, see it's not going to get back to that. I'm not really concerned because there is is no match for the US capital markets in terms of an efficient form of capital and attaining that capital that you really need to scale your business, not just from that perspective, but also rewarding employees, democratizing investment, M and AM and A is a big reason that I hear some of these companies going, they believe that there is a different M&A currency that you get with becoming a public company versus staying private. So I continue to be incredibly optimistic. However, if people are going to be more thoughtful about when they go public, I don't think you're going to see a rush to the public markets like you saw in 2021 for quite some time. But importantly, I think we're out of the 2022-2023 closed IPO markets. Is there a chance we get back to that rush and and what needs to be in place for that to happen? Well, it feels like, you know we have the capacity to have a pretty normal year. If we've raised 14, just over 14 billion to date in an average year, you raise about 45 billion in the public markets. We're not too far off. And based on what we're seeing in our pipeline, I think this could be a pretty close to normal year. How much of that depends on the Fed cutting? Is that necessary? I don't think it's necessarily dependent on the Fed cutting. I think people are getting used to this concept of there's a little bit of uncertainty in the markets. The big concern you had over the last two years was the hard landing versus soft landing. And I think people feel pretty good about our economy. So I don't know that it matters if the Fed cuts once, not at all, whatever the case may be. But I do think you'll probably see a little bit of a closure of the IPO markets around election time like you have in any other election year. Fair enough. And and going back to some things you mentioned of of why the American IPO market remains strong despite some of the wobbles, things like the liquidity, the investor base, it's made it a global destination. But there was this report that she in the Chinese fast fashion company wants to list in London instead of the US because of the regulatory environment. Is that global beacon that the US going to change with the US regulators that are more intense on cracking down in China? I don't know about that. I mean I can't really speak to the conversations that a prospect like a Xian has has had with with our regulators. I do hope that they're able to enter the US markets, but it will be up to our regulators to discern to determine how.