U.S. IPO Weekly Recap: IPO Market Sees A Little Activity In The Short Holiday Week

One small IPO and one SPAC priced this past week as markets slowed around the Thanksgiving holiday.

Skincare company Elevai Labs (ELAB) priced at the low end to raise $6 million at a $69 million market cap. Small and highly unprofitable, the company offers “physician-dispensed” skincare products, meaning they are sold exclusively in physician clinics or medically-directed businesses. Its initial product line uses patent-pending stem cell processing technology and includes two post-skincare procedure care products. Elevai Labs finished down 7%.

Colombier Acquisition Corp. II (CLBR.U) upsized to raise $150 million. The blank check company plans to identify opportunities in the “entrepreneurship, innovation & growth” industries and focus on businesses with scalable growth platforms, strong competitive positioning, and enterprise values between $150 million and $2 billion, among other characteristics.

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With the Thanksgiving holiday behind us, the IPO market is officially entering the final stretch of 2023. Many candidates have indicated plans to wait until 2024 but rumbles in the pipeline mean that we could still see some activity before year-end.

Several issuers are primed for post-Thanksgiving launches. Recent filers like product testing company UL Solutions (ULS), Chinese EV brand ZEEKR (ZK), and specialty insurer Fortegra (TFG) could lead the way, with biotech Carmot Therapeutics (CRMO) following later in December.

Other large filers that have provided updates recently include hospital billing platform Waystar (WAY), car-sharing platform Turo (TURO), homebuilder Smith Douglas (SDHC), and helicopter transport company PHI Group (ROTR).

Street research is expected for two companies in the week ahead.

IPO Market Snapshot

The Renaissance IPO Indices are market cap-weighted baskets of newly public companies. As of 11/22/2023, the Renaissance IPO Index was up 33.1% year-to-date, while the S&P 500 was up 20.4%. Renaissance Capital’s IPO ETF (IPO) tracks the index, and top ETF holdings include Palantir Technologies (PLTR) and Kenvue (KVUE). The Renaissance International IPO Index was down 16.9% year-to-date, while the ACWX was up 9.5%. Renaissance Capital’s International IPO ETF (IPOS) tracks the index, and top ETF holdings include Kuaishou and Porsche.

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Editor’s Note: The summary bullets for this article were chosen by Seeking Alpha editors.