Last week, Puig’s IPO led to fairly flat trading, but that was better than many other publicly traded brands in the fashion and beauty industry. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Glossy Podcast for interviews with fashion industry leaders and Week in Review episodes, and the Glossy Beauty Podcast for interviews from the beauty industry. –Danny Parisi, sr. fashion reporter
The IPO market is still flat
The first few days of trading after fashion and beauty giant Puig went public on Thursday were muted. After some analysts expected a blockbuster IPO, share prices were mostly flat through the first few days, ending any hopes that the IPO market would come roaring back.
But the IPO was in line with the $2.8 billion pricing that Puig had planned. And the first day of trading went far better than some other recent fashion and beauty IPOs. When Birkenstock went public in October, for example, its valuation of $46 per share wasn’t received well by the market and its stock slid by 21% in the crucial first week.
Publicly traded brands are having an increasingly difficult time dealing with skittish investors. High interest rates mean investors want to see returns on their investment fast and restructuring isn’t as easy. It’s one reason Nordstrom is considering an offer from private equity firm Sycamore Partners to take Nordstrom private, as reported last week. CEO Erik Nordstrom publicly indicated his desire to take Nordstrom private last month, and it seems likely he’ll get his wish sometime this year.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, Allbirds was threatened with being delisted from Nasdaq over its tanking share price. If it can’t raise those prices in the next six months, it too will go private, albeit involuntarily.
So while Puig’s first days as a public company may have been on the quieter side, it could have gone a lot worse. Analysts are hoping that the continued success of both Puig and other recent IPOs at companies like Galderma Group AG and CVC Capital Partners, which both had IPOs at over $2, will signal a revival of the public market.
