[author: Carlos Juarez]

Renaissance Capital released its Fall 2015 US IPO Preview in early September, which reported that 131 IPOs were completed, raising $22 billion. The healthcare sector led the IPO market in number of offerings thanks to the increased number of biotech company IPOs. Renaissance predicted that healthcare IPOs would continue to drive IPO activity through the end of the year. The report expected that the 200 deal mark would be reached in 2015.  While the report looked forward to upcoming consumer IPOs, which could raise over $1 billion each, it also noted declining returns.  Tech IPO returns averaged -4%, which Renaissance attributes to the decrease in offerings from the sector.

Renaissance’s US IPO Market 3Q 2015 Quarterly Review, released at the end of September, reported 34 deals raising $5.3 billion for the third quarter of 2015.  Renaissance reported declining returns for IPOs in general and noted that IPOs were ending the quarter below their offering prices. During the third quarter, three quarters of total IPOs were in the healthcare and consumer sectors, while there was only one tech IPO completed.  A total of 15 venture capital backed IPOs and 12 private equity backed IPOs were completed during the third quarter.

William Blair recently released their ECM Quarterly for Q3 2015.  Citing growing concerns over the global growth outlook and the Federal Reserve’s proposed interest rate hikes, William Blair reported poor performance from the S&P 500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq which each fell between 6.9 – 7.6% during the last quarter.  Also impacted was the Russell 2000, which covers the small-cap segment of U.S. equity, which fell 12.2%. The report noted that the year-to-date IPO proceeds have dropped, in comparison to 2013 and 2014, to $18.8 billion from the 109 total IPOs.  In the first three quarters of 2015, there have been no large IPOs with offering over $1 billion, with the largest IPO for 2015 raising $778 million.  William Blair also reports that only 29% of IPOs price in or above the filing range of IPOs conducted in September, in comparison to 87% in July.  Much of this was attributed to continued market volatility.