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Yes of course.
Almost all of the companies developing in the private markets today have been contacted by a blank check company seeking a deal.
To kick off the day, office-sharing start-up WeWork has reportedly entered into talks to partner with a specialist acquisition company, for example the wall street journal, in a deal that could go public and value companies at around $ 10 billion. The SPAC in question is Bow Capital Management, run by NBA Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé.
If a deal were to be made, it would be a surprisingly quick return to government procurement for WeWork, whose disastrous attempt to go public in 2019 reduced its valuation to a fraction of its original figure. New WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani also said he plans to make a profit for the company in 2021 before returning. the idea of ​​an IPO.
ROBIN HOOD: The popular stock trading app would have raised another $ 1 billion from existing investors in addition to hundreds of millions of additional credits as it faces a liquidity crisis triggered by the ongoing trading frenzy.
This is just the latest chapter in the saga that began with irreverent Reddit investors on a crusade against short hedge funds. The wildcat trade made it difficult for Robinhood to pay customers who belonged to trades and offer collateral at clearing facilities. On Thursday, the startup suspended the purchase of shares in companies such as GameStopwidespread drawing anger of its users and even lead to legal action. “In order to protect the company and our customers, we had to limit the purchase of these shares,” Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, told CNBC. Thursday. The company will allow limited trading in GameStop’s shares starting Friday.
Even though the story is presented as one of the big investors battling retail players, the story is not so simple: the rally in shares of the movie channel AMC may have also been a godsend for the tech-driven private equity firm. Silver Lake and credit investor Mudrick Capital Management.
MORE SOFTWARE SPINOUTS IN PROGRESS AFTER QUALTRICS OPTION?: German software publisher SAP acquired the polling and analytics firm Qualtrics for $ 8 billion about two years ago, with the then CEO of SAP seeking to appease critics of the expensive deal by comparing it to Facebook’s famous acquisition of photo-sharing company Instagram.
While Qualtrics’ IPO on Thursday certainly doesn’t meet SAP’s original intent, the investment has paid off, at least on paper. Qualtrics shares rose 51% when they started, valuing the company at $ 27.3 billion. SAP plans to retain a majority stake in the company.
Term Sheet met with Qualtrics Zig Serafin and founder Ryan Smith on Thursday to ask him about the thinking behind the spin-off, and Smith had an interesting prediction:
“I think that’s going to be a trend where you see other companies looking at this and saying, this is a really good new path for people to go to the IPO,” the president said on Zoom. “How many businesses have been acquired and then split into businesses like this? Not a lot. There are a lot of companies within large companies whose market and category are hyper-growing … As we looked at almost two years in the SAP and Qualtrics relationship, the real question arose: “ Are we going to invest heavily in the current economic context? or is there another way to invest more? “
SAP has struggled in recent months to appease growth-seeking shareholders, with the company’s shares remaining at the same level last year. The Qualtrics spin-off also attracted Silver Lake as an investor.
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