How Alibaba IPO is Fuelling a Glut of Tech Listings

Following the booming success of Alibaba's share sale in New York, a listing of technology incubator Rocket Internet promises to value the German company at $8bn – everything is looking rosy in the technology IPO pipeline.

The view was that if the Alibaba sale had not gone well this would have hurt the entire IPO market.

Renaissance Capital predicts up to $80bn in IPO funding this year which would be an increase of 46% on 2013.

Last year 222 companies went public, with 45 coming from the technology industry. The largest of these was Twitter, which raised $1.82bn (£1.1bn, €1.4bn) and saw its shares continue to rise after the sale.

Twitter's momentum in the tech market may have stalled with the rather over-blown float of Candy Crush makers King earlier this year, but Alibaba seems to have got the ball rolling again. Its big ticket buzz is spreading to hot areas like cloud computing and ad-tech, for example.

But while Rocket Internet has almost doubled the amount it's seeking to raise in its IPO to €1.4bn, there is consternation elsewhere. In contrast to the success of Alibaba, the float of RBS's American unit Citizens received a lukewarm response.

While there is optimism about a renascent IPO pipeline in Europe and the US across all sectors, market watchers said the level is down on last year. And this month BlackRock bemoaned the poor quality of European IPOs, pointing out that about third of them were trading below their initial prices.

Tech IPO Pipeline

As for other Alibaba follow-on IPOs, there are 16 technology or Internet companies that have filed to raise money through initial stock sales, according to data compiled by Dealogic.

The US technology IPO pipeline includes the likes of cloud storage service Box which filed for an IPO back in March but is yet to pull the trigger. It is looking to raise $500m.

Other cloud-based services due to float include HubSpot which connects marketers with customers and wants to raise $100m, and Yodlee which offers financial data and is looking for an extra $75m.

LendingClub's fundraising target is $500m and its mission is to "transform the banking system to make credit more affordable and investing more rewarding."

Online dating platform Zoosk, which apparently crunches lots of data when matching people, is due to list this year and looks to raise $100m.

Online furniture and home products vendor Wayfair is also set to list, looking to raise $350m. ReWalk Robotics which builds exoskeletons to free people from wheelchairs, is hoping to raise $50m.

Dealogic also mentions three Chinese or China related IPOs queued up. Xiamen-based mobile and web game developer Feiyu Technology International aims to raise up to $300m in an initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange by the end of this year.

Also slated for listing is Chukong Holdings, a Chinese mobile game and service provider that created the game Fishing Joy will list on the Nasdaq to raise $150m.

Tinho Union Group is based in Melbourne, Australia and focuses on providing travel services to the corporate and business travel sectors through its e-commerce platform in China. It will list on the Australian Stock Exchange.