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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Record Year for IPOs

 2021 was a good year for deal-making, but one type of big transaction stood out – initial public offerings.

Nationally, this is the hottest year in history for companies going public. Wall Street Journal reported in November that so far, more than 900 companies had gone public in 2021, raising nearly $300 billion.

In the Valley region, the largest deals of the year features three important IPOs. Glendale-based LegalZoom.com Inc. went public in June, completing a goal that had eluded the online document provider since 2012, when it first announced and later canceled a public offering.

Zevia Inc., the non-sugar soda manufacturer in Encino, also staged an initial public offering this year, as did Dole Foods.

 When Valley region companies weren’t selling their shares, they were buying other companies. The clear pattern here was that large well-capitalized companies could access cheap money to fund these purchases, as these companies managed to navigate the pandemic economy relatively unscathed.

The largest acquisition in the region was Teledyne Technology Inc.’s $8.2 billion takeover of Flir Systems to fill out its sensor business. Other notable acquirers for the year included drug maker Amgen Inc., real estate investment trust Public Storage and label manufacturer Avery Dennison Corp., all of which completed multiple deals totaling in the billions of dollars. 

S&P; Global, the company that provides data for the Business Journal’s monthly M&A; page, called the current economy “an unprecedented era of easy credit,” but noted that eventually the cycle will turn. S&P; Global reported that during the first half of 2021, North American M&A; deals totaled $1.2 trillion in disclosed value, up from nearly $288 billion in the first half of 2020. In terms of number of mergers or acquisitions, there were 11,520 deals in the first half of the year alone.

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