The landscape of companies entering the public arena is sure changing. For one, we now have an environment where companies are waiting longer to hit the market with an IPO. The reasons for such delay are numerous and varied. At the end of the day, many companies have decided to step back and access such matters as costs and compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. In addition, companies are assessing private market valuations versus public market valuations. Under all this analysis and assessment is the ever present and painful memory of the dot com bust. Given these circumstances and the healthy market for private funding, the IPO market is looking flat for 2007. Rather, the market for raising capital via private equity funding is looking bright.

Consider the case of Home Depot which went public in 1981 with a market capitalization of approximately $34 million. Today, the company is riding a market cap of $81.5 billion. Now, that is some significant growth. In today’s environment, some might wonder if Home Depot would actually go public or seek out other funding. An interesting thought!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 at 7:33 pm and is filed under Business Insights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.