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We always had the vision and and dream of being listed on Nasdaq. Um we are capital markets company. Our customers trade stocks from 20 different capital markets. We're passionate about crypto markets and I always believed our next stage of growth is going to be as a public company.

That was EToro's CEO after the stock and crypto trading app debuted on the Nasdaq, opening at over 34% of its original IPO price stock down a bit this morning. Joining us now, Phil Haslett, Equity Zens co-founder and Chief strategy officer. Great to have you on this morning. I I'm curious how you view the EToro IPO. Do you see it as a catalyst for the broader IPO market going forward this year?

Yeah, good morning. Thanks for having me. I think we're approaching it with kind of cautious optimism. It's always helpful to see a company, particularly in Fintech, come public. Uh do I think it's going to completely open the floodgates? I'm not so sure. But the fact that there has been positive market response to a company within Fintech, I think bodes well for the overall sector. Uh but we still have overall macro concerns. I think that are keeping other companies waiting kind of on the sidelines for a bit more time.

What what are the raises that we're looking at Phil comparative to IPO cycles past and and how much more these companies are looking for as they enter into the public markets in order to kind of sustain their business and scale to the point that investors are expecting.

Totally. So we are nowhere close to kind of the the heights we saw in 2021 as far as IPO activity. Um, in fact, I believe this is really the first venture backed Fintech IPO of any size in almost four years, which is pretty wild and gives you a sense of what other sectors are kind of dealing with within tech to come public. What I expect companies are doing is that there are plenty of really healthy companies that have planned for their filings to go public and are seeing that this is one really good window to do so. Particularly the fact that you have kind of volatility at a pretty low number relative to the last few months. You have relative stability uh at a macro level, right? And that's very relative though. And the last thing is it's pretty rare to go public in the middle of the summer. Uh it's a generally slow time for IPOs. So I think a lot of companies consider that maybe between now and say the end of May or early June might be their last shot before call it September or October.

Yeah, good reminder that those vacations always come into play even for the IPO market. I I am interested in your take on this. I had an investor chat earlier this week and this investor was telling me that the IPO market isn't so much driven by the price of the S&P 500. It's more so just the uncertainty, the volatility that still exists in the background to your point on that volatility. Given that we still have these trade negotiations pending, uh to what extent do you think that even if the market rallies, if that trade uncertainty remains, that that could be a headwind for IPOs?

It's a great point to highlight, you know, the S&P I think about 26% of the waiting in the S&P is dominated by mag 7, right? By the top seven stocks. And so the S&P is not really the harbinger for how to think about the IPO window because it's really just a heavy concentration. What's more important is how the other 493 companies are performing. That's piece one. Piece two is as quickly as volatility can go down, it can come back up, right? It was only a mere five weeks ago that the the VIX, the volatility volatility index was at 53 and now we're at 17, right? So things can come and go. We like to joke that with this administration uh change is only one tweet away. Uh and so things can come back quickly but they can also go away. And so I also would point to the fact that the retail investor sentiment despite the S&P coming back into the black for the year, retail investor sentiment is relatively tepid, right? About one third of people are bullish, one third are bearish, and one third are neutral. Um that is not the dream scenario you would want to have to go public and so it's kind of like this weird feeling where the S&P looks better, things feel better, tariffs are maybe off the table for a little bit and yet we kind of have this little knot in our stomach as a company of is now the right time? And I think that's transpiring into the IPO markets as well.

Does geopolitical tension also add a ceiling to the potential type of fervor that we could see for international companies that come to list on US exchanges as we know in in years past, a lot of those companies had said that they want access to US investors and there are myriad of different ways to do that whether you just list some ADRs, American depository receipts or shares. So how is this kind of environment more difficult for an international company that wants to target specifically the flows that they're seeing within the equity markets in the US?

It's a great question. I think there's there's equal and opposing forces right now on why it's good and bad to do that as an international company. One that's in support of it is that there's a general theme towards investing in emerging markets, right? And so by extension you could think of an international company bringing their listing to the US is one way to cata or kind of capitalize on that investor interest. The offsetting challenge, of course, is that there is a lot of geopolitical risk, there's uncertainty on tariffs and that votes against you. So, you know, it's it's hard to see which one shakes out better than the other. Uh but predominantly as, you know, at Equity Zen we're mostly following the US IPO market, there is a lot of, you know, uncertainty still there. I think that's probably the case internationally as well. Hopefully though, you know, EToro is an example of a company that, you know, is mostly built internationally, but has a US presence and I think it's been really successful. And you know, we've also heard that you know, car's plans would be to move their their listing over to the US. Um that also is another sign of maybe a leading indicator that more will follow.