It was already a great year for IPOs, but this past week took things to an entirely new level.
DoorDash (ticker: DASH) and Airbnb (ABNB) started the week as private companies last valued at a combined $34 billion. They ended the week as public companies together worth nearly $170 billion. The initial public offerings capture how Covid-19 has fundamentally shifted the economy and the financial markets.
Here’s what we learned from the historic week.
Growth Is the New Value: Investors are desperate for growth, and they don’t care what it costs. Snowflake (SNOW) is growing 100% a year, a level it can’t possibly sustain. The data warehousing stock has tripled since its own IPO in September, and it’s trading at 100 times next year’s projected revenue, a figure that’s tough to justify.