The biggest IPO of all time occurred in 2019 when Saudi Aramco oil company was floated, according to new research by City Index, the international spread betting, FX and CFD trading business.
City Index looked at some of the largest ever IPOs and ranked them by total revenue to find out which were the biggest ones of all time.
The top 10 biggest IPOs of all time:
The Saudi Aramco oil company offering generated over $25bn in investment, beating the previous record holder by almost $4bn.
Aramco's public market cap is almost $2trn as of March 2023, making it the third most valuable company in the world after technology giants Apple and Microsoft.
Alibaba is a Chinese technology company founded by Jack Ma in 1999 which has gone on to become one of the most valuable companies in the world, it made over $100bn in revenue in 2022. Its IPO generated almost $22bn when it was floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014, a record for an IPO at the time.
The SoftBank Group is a Japanese holding company which has interests in many different industries, including owning almost 24% of Alibaba.
The SoftBank Corporation is an affiliate business that is the third-largest wireless carrier in Japan, and it was this wing of SoftBank which had the third-largest IPO in history in 2018. The offering made $21.3bn, just $500m less than Alibaba four years earlier.
Recent IPO success:
Prometheus Biosciences has had the most successful IPO in recent years, the pharmaceutical company had an IPO in March 2021.
When it was initially floated the share price was $19 but has since risen to over $112 - meaning that investing $1,000 in the IPO would be worth $5,902 today.
Another stock that's risen over 400% since its IPO is Belite Bio, which is also a pharmaceutical company. This San Diego-based company was founded in 2016 and went public six years later in April 2022. If you had invested $1,000 in the Belite Bio IPO you'd now have $5,027 worth of stock.
Academy is an American sporting goods company which had the third-highest increase in the stock price of any company that has gone public in recent years. The share price rose by almost 350% since the company was floated in October 2020. This means that a return of $4,424 could have been made from a $1,000 investment in this IPO.
Further findings:
- Amazon was the second quickest company to go public.
- Coca Cola was the slowest company to go public. Funded in 1892, it only went public in 1919, after 27 years.
- Coca-Cola was one of just four companies in the 25 largest to take more than 20 years to become public, another was its big rival Pepsi.
