2021 has been a blockbuster year for initial public offerings, with some comparing the latest frenzy to the IPO boom of 1999.
While high profile names like Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ:HOOD), and Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:COIN) have failed to catch on with investors since their highly anticipated initial public offerings, there have been several that have more than doubled in valuation since going public this year.
Below we’ll focus on a trio of tech unicorns, which, thanks to rapid growth and a large market opportunity, have the potential to become market leaders in their respective fields.
1. Affirm Holdings
- IPO Date: Jan. 13, 2021
- IPO Price: $49/Share
- Year-To-Date Gains: +158.5%
- Current Market Cap: $35.6 Billion
Affirm Holdings (NASDAQ:AFRM) kicked off the IPO party in 2021 when it made its market debut. The fintech firm, which is emerging as a leader in the increasingly popular ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) space, priced its initial public offering at $49 per share—up from its original listing price range of $41 to $44 a share.
The online payments company, which was founded in 2013 by PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) co-founder Max Levchin, saw its shares pop 98.5% in their first day on the NASDAQ, ending the trading day at $97.24. Affirm raised about $1.2 billion in the process.
AFRM continued to rally in the months after going public, touching an all-time high of $176.65 on Nov. 8. Shares—which are up 158.5% since the IPO—closed at $126.68 yesterday, earning the San Francisco, California-based consumer financing firm a valuation of roughly $35.6 billion.
Affirm reported year-over-year fiscal first quarter revenue growth of 55% on Nov. 10, easily topping expectations, thanks to a surge in demand for its installment payment service.
Active consumers of the company's BNPL plans—which allow customers to split online purchases into several monthly installments without accruing interest—jumped 124% from a year earlier to 8.7 million. Gross merchandise volume (GMV)—another key sales metric—rose 84% to $2.7 billion.
Beyond the top and bottom-line numbers, Affirm also announced a deeper e-commerce partnership with Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), which will see it become the sole provider of BNPL services to Amazon until January 2023.
The payments company has been busy expanding partnerships with major retailers, including Peloton (NASDAQ:PTON), Walmart (NYSE:WMT), and Shopify (NYSE:SHOP). Affirm's merchant base totaled 102,000 as of Sept. 30, up almost 1,500% from 6,500 a year earlier.
2. Roblox
- IPO Date: Mar. 10, 2021
- IPO Price: $45/Share
- Year-To-Date Gains: +180.2%
- Market Cap: $73 Billion
Roblox (NYSE:RBLX), which operates a wildly popular online platform that allows users to easily play and develop videogames, made headlines earlier this year when it completed its long-awaited debut on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of the San Mateo, California-based digital entertainment company, which went public in a direct listing, began trading at $64.50, well above the reference price of $45.
The red-hot stock has since racked up huge gains, rallying roughly 180% year-to-date. RBLX closed Tuesday’s session at $126.10, within sight of its recent record peak of $141.60 reached on Nov. 22. At current levels, the gaming platform provider has a market cap of $73 billion.
Roblox delivered impressive earnings and revenue when it reported Q3 results on Nov. 8, driven by strong user engagement and robust growth in customer additions. The videogame platform said that revenue excluding deferred sales more than doubled in the quarter, rising 102% from the year-ago period to $509.3 million, while bookings—a key metric for the company—grew 28%.
Additionally, Roblox’s average daily active users (DAUs)—composed mainly of teens and preteens—rose 31% year-over-year to 47.3 million in the third quarter. Those users spent 11.2 billion hours engaged on the platform, an increase of 28% from the same period last year.
Perhaps of greater importance, the company, founded in 2004 by David Baszucki, has stepped up efforts in recent months to become a major player in the emerging metaverse space.
3. Monday.com
- IPO Date: June 10, 2021
- IPO Price: $155/Share
- Year-To-Date Gains: +132.1%
- Market Cap: $15.9 Billion
Monday.com (NASDAQ:MNDY), which operates a cloud-based platform that allows companies to create their own applications and work management software, made its trading debut on the NASDAQ. The Tel Aviv, Israel-based tech firm priced its initial public offering at $155 per share, above the expected range of $125 to $140, raising $574 million in the process.
Monday—which received a vote of confidence from video-chat company Zoom Video (NASDAQ:ZM) and cloud giant Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) via two separate $75 million investments on the day of the IPO—saw its stock rally by more than 15% during the first day of trade, ending at $178.87.
MNDY stayed hot in the months following the IPO, reaching an all-time high of $450 on Nov. 9. The company's shares—which have increased around 134% year-to-date—closed at $359.80 yesterday, giving the workplace management software maker a market cap of $15.9 billion.
In its third quarter report released Nov. 10, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) company earned revenue of $83 million, up 95% from the year-ago period amid soaring enterprise demand for its cloud-based work management tools. Cofounder and co-CEO, Roy Mann said in the earnings release:
"We achieved another strong quarter of top-line growth driven by the continued rapid adoption of our Work OS by new customers along with expansion within our existing customer base."
Monday’s total number of customers generating over $50,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR)—an important sales metric used by SaaS companies operating on a yearly subscription-based model—totaled 613 as of Sept. 30, up a whopping 231% from 185 in the year-ago period.
Some of its most notable customers include, Peloton, eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY), HubSpot (NYSE:HUBS), and Universal Music Group (AS:UMG).