科技界独角兽公司的上市美梦为何难以成真？

刘颖

The unicorns may be running out of room to fly.
    Recently, there has been growing concern about the health of the private companies, mostly tech firms, that have been nicknamed unicorns because they have been valued at more than $1 billion. Fortune reported last month that a number of venture capitalists keep ‘dying unicorn’ lists, tallies of the highly valued startups that they expect to go under. And a number of these startups have recently come under attack for their business practices, accounting, or claims about their technology.
    Meanwhile, the IPO market has been showing some cracks. First Data, one of the biggest IPOs of the year, ended up pricing below its range. Supermarket chain Albertsons decided to delay its IPO. And the stock performance of tech companies that have recently IPOed have been lackluster.
    The result: Even if all the unicorns were originally on a path to becoming companies that generated gold at the end of the magical rainbow, it’s becoming increasingly clear that not all will complete the journey.
    Of course, there are so many of these highly valued private companies in the first place because there was a sense that entrepreneurs would be keeping their companies private for longer. What’s more, many of the companies probably aren’t ready to go public.
    “The proverbial IPO window is not open for all of these companies,” says Anand Sanwal, the CEO of CBInsights, which maintains a unicorn list. “The fundamentals of many of these companies are far from proven. They would get chewed up in the IPO market right now.”
    But investors are eventually going to be looking for a way to cash out, especially for companies that have gone a few years since their last funding. And the IPO market is one of the primary methods to cash out. Startups also get acquired, another means for investors to collect. But given how big some of these companies have become, an IPO is more likely. As a result, more and more of the companies that were shy about going public may soon be looking to do so.
    “We have to work past the erroneous mythos that ‘stay private longer’ was a good idea,” says venture capitalist Bill Gurley, of Benchmark, who has been warning that unicorns could be running into problems. “That one really bad piece of advice is going to cost the industry a ton of equity value. Many won’t be able to make the shift.”
    The unicorns could make this shift, but the IPO market would have to have one of its best years ever for that to work. Here are the numbers: There are roughly 140 unicorns by the latest tallies, and just over 90 of them are based in the U.S. Based on their last recorded round of funding, those 90-plus unicorns are worth just over $310 billion. To reward early investors, most companies that go public usually do so at a higher valuation then what they were valued at when they last raised money. Add another 20%, which sounds reasonable now, but if the market gets hot again it could be much more than that, and we are up to around $375 billion.
    Still, companies don’t sell all of their shares when they IPO. Over the past two decades, the average has been 35%. That means for all the U.S.-based unicorns to go public, IPO investors would have to buy $131 billion worth of newly issued shares.
    That’s never happened in a single year. The best year ever for IPOs was 2000, according to data from research firm Dealogic. That year, new issues raised $105 billion. But the average for the IPO market over the past 20 years has been $56 billion. This year, the IPO market has slumped to just $35 billion, far less than what’s needed to satisfy all the unicorns’ dreams.
    Then again, even if all the unicorns wanted to go public, it’s unlikely they would do so in the next year. It would probably be spread out over a few years. What’s more, most tech companies tend to sell a smaller portion of their ownership in an IPO than other companies, more like 20%. That brings the IPO ask from the unicorns down to $75 billion, which, spread out over a number of years, is possible.
    Leslie Pfrang, who advises companies on IPOs at Class V Group, says the unicorn companies and their investors have nothing to worry about. She says there is plenty of capital out there for IPOs, even if a bunch of the unicorns all decided to stampede the IPO market at once.
    But that’s only considering the unicorns. There are other companies looking to go public as well, some of them more established than startups. Private equity firms have lots of former leveraged buyouts – Albertsons is one of them – that they would like to take public. This doesn’t include the 68 companies that have already filed documents and are waiting to go public already, according to Dealogic. What’s more, there are more unicorns coming. CBInsights has a list of 50 other private companies, mostly based in the U.S., that are likely to soon get $1 billion valuations. The unicorn waiting line is getting longer.
    The unicorns aren’t just tech companies, but a lot of them are. And if you look at just tech deals, $60 billion starts to look like a big number for the IPO market again, even over a few years. The tech IPO market peaked in 2000 at $44 billion, and it has never gotten back there, though last year was the closest it’s been. This year, 22 tech companies went public, raising just $7.6 billion.
    Based on that, the current blessing of unicorns could have a very, very long wait.

刘颖

“独角兽公司”可能已经失去了腾飞的空间。

    最近，独角兽公司的健康状况引发了越来越多的关注。这些私营公司估值超过10亿美元，其中大多数为科技公司。《财富》杂志上个月报道称，许多风险投资家都有一份“垂死的独角兽”清单，记录了他们预测将遭遇失败的高估值初创公司。许多初创公司的商业行为、会计处理及其技术主张最近也备受诟病。

    与此同时，IPO市场也不尽如人意。First Data公司进行了今年规模最大的IPO之一，但其定价却低于预估区间。连锁超市艾伯森决定推迟上市。最近上市的科技公司的股价均表现平平。

    结果便是：尽管所有的独角兽最初都希望跨过那道神奇的彩虹，变成一家点石成金的公司，但越来越清楚的是，并非所有公司都能走到最后。

    当然，如此多高估值私有公司突然涌现的一大原因是，有一种观念认为，创业者们保持公司私有化的时间会更长。此外，许多公司可能并未做好上市的准备。

    市场研究机构CBInsights公司CEO阿南德·桑瓦尔表示：“众所周知的IPO窗口不会对所有公司敞开。许多独角兽公司的基本面并未得到验证，现在进入IPO市场可能会受到伤害。” CBInsights有一份独角兽公司名单。

    但投资者们终究需要找到套现的方式，尤其是距离上一次融资已经过去许多年的公司。IPO市场便是主要的套现方法之一。初创公司也可能被收购，这是投资者收回投资的另外一种方式。但考虑到某些独角兽公司庞大的规模，IPO或许更加可行。因此，越来越多之前对上市问题一直遮遮掩掩的公司，可能会很快进行IPO。

    Benchmark公司风险投资家比尔·格利曾经警告独角兽公司会出现问题。他表示：“我们必须抛弃一种错误的观点，即‘保持私有化更长时间’是个好主意。这条糟糕的建议，将使行业损失大量的股权价值。许多公司无法完成从私有公司向上市公司的转变。”

    独角兽公司或许能够完成这种转变，但这要看IPO市场能否达到其最佳状态。下面是一些统计数据：根据最新统计，目前约有140家独角兽公司，其中仅有90多家位于美国。根据有据可查的最新一轮融资数据，这90多家独角兽公司的估值超过了3100亿美元。为了回报早期投资者，大多数公司在上市时给出的估值，会高于最新一轮融资时的估值。按照目前的形势，估值提高20%听起来较为合理，由此我们得出的数字是3750亿美元。但如果市场再次火爆起来，独角兽公司的估值恐怕会更高。

    此外，公司上市时，并不会出售所有股份。过去二十年间，公司上市时平均出售的股份为35%。这意味着，所有在美国的独角兽公司上市时，IPO投资者们需要认购价值1310亿美元的新发行股票。

    IPO市场从未在一年之内达到如此庞大的融资规模。市场研究公司Dealogic的数据显示，在IPO最为火爆的2000年，新发行股票共融资1050亿美元。但在过去20年，IPO市场的平均融资规模仅有560亿美元。今年，IPO市场的融资规模缩小到350亿美元，远远无法实现所有独角兽公司的梦想。

    而且，即便所有独角兽公司都想上市，他们也不可能全都选在明年。它们将在多年内分散上市。另外，多数科技公司在IPO中出让的公司所有权比例，要比其他公司低20%左右。如此一来，独角兽公司的IPO融资需求将减少到750亿美元，如果分散在多年内上市，是可行的。

    市场研究公司Class V Group的莱斯利·普夫朗一直在为公司上市提供咨询。她认为，独角兽公司及其投资者不必担心。她表示，市场有充足的资本，即便马上有一批独角兽公司扎堆上市，市场资金也足以满足它们的融资需求。

    但她只考虑了独角兽公司。还有许多其他公司也在等待上市，有些公司甚至比初创公司更加成熟。私募股权公司之前进行了大量的杠杆收购，艾伯森便是其中之一，它们同样渴望上市。另外，根据Dealogic的统计，已经有68家公司提交了申请文件，正在等待上市。更重要的是，未来还会有更多的独角兽公司诞生。CBInsights的一份清单列出了另外50家估值即将达到10亿美元的私有公司，其中多数位于美国。等待上市的独角兽公司的队伍将变得日益庞大。

    独角兽公司不只限于科技公司，但科技公司占了很大一部分。而单纯从科技公司的角度来看，对于现在的IPO市场，600亿美元看起来是一个庞大的数字，甚至在未来几年内也是如此。2000年，科技公司IPO的融资规模达到了史上最高的440亿美元，这一数字从未被超越，只有去年的表现最为接近。今年，已有22家科技公司上市，但仅融资了76亿美元。

    因此，独角兽们恐怕要在漫长的等待中，为自己的命运祈祷了。