The stock market’s striking rebound from the tariff disruption imposed by US President Donald Trump has rekindled global IPO activity, as businesses without direct exposure to trade look to get deals done before the summer — and before geopolitical tensions flare up again.
After several slow years for listings, bankers and investors were preparing for a standout 2025, while nervously monitoring the then-President-elect’s speeches promising action on trade. Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement more than justified their worry. In its wake, a slew of suspended deals made for the slowest April in terms of initial public offering volume since 2020, the depths of the pandemic.
Now, with tensions easing and the US$43.6 billion ($56.62 billion) raised in 2025 IPOs so far running just behind the same period last year, frozen listings are finally moving forward.
They include EToro Group Ltd., one of the first among the crop that delayed plans. The Israel-based trading and investment platform priced its upsized US IPO above its marketed range just days after the US-China detente arrived, with shares soaring 29% in its debut session.
Also in the US, banking upstart Chime Financial Inc. is potentially vying for the country’s largest IPO before the summer lull takes hold. The company, which was valued at US$25 billion in a funding round in 2021, filed on Tuesday for a listing that could price as early as June.
Connected TV ad platform firm MNTN Inc. and digital physical therapy firm Hinge Health Inc. launched their US IPOs this week, and are out pitching investors.
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“We have seen a lot more certainty come into the market given recent announcements,” said Keith Canton, JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s head of Americas equity capital markets. “The worst-case fears regarding tariffs are probably not going to come to pass.”
Dire reaction
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The dire market reaction to Trump’s so-called Liberation Day raised fears the IPO window might stay shut for months. While a handful of sizable deals for Chinese and Middle Eastern companies moved forward, most companies expecting springtime listings put plans on ice.
Ticket platform StubHub Holdings Inc. and medical supply company Medline Industries Inc. were among the stalled US deals, Bloomberg News reported. In Europe, investment firm Greenbridge SA postponed plans for a Stockholm IPO.
In Asia, work on a listing for the Indian unit of South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc. that may raise as much as US$1.7 billion was paused, people familiar with the matter have said. Weeks later, a domestic offering for machine-tools maker DN Solutions Co. in South Korea targeting US$1.1 billion was shelved.
Frosty conditions in the US began to thaw in the first week of May. Stocks were already in a halting recovery when two insurance companies, Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd. and American Integrity Insurance Group Inc., went ahead with mid-sized IPOs, and both companies’ stocks are up from their listing prices since starting to trade on May 8.
“People are willing to play the IPO product for the right themes,” said Steven Halperin, co-head of capital markets at Moelis & Co.
“You have to be somewhat tariff or recession proof if you are doing an IPO,” Halperin said. “It’s just a matter of what kind of discount is needed.”
It helped that the VIX Index, Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge, had steadily retreated after spiking to more than 60 in the week before Liberation Day. In the wake of the US and China announcing a 90-day pause on much of their reciprocal tariffs, the measure of volatility is sitting below 20, typically the level where bankers start to question moving forward with IPOs.
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Now, with more stability baked in, IPOs are resuming their earlier pace, with stalled deals like EToro’s coming back to life, and MNTN and Hinge Health’s listings potentially on track for debuts as soon as this month. Rising Bitcoin prices could also tempt cryptocurrency-related names like stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group Inc. and crypto exchange and custodian Gemini into launching their planned IPOs.
For those weighing a US debut before the summer lull, there’s little room for delay given the slate of holidays in late May, June and early July. Candidates will also need to keep an eye on US-China trade negotiations as the end of the 90-day pause gets closer.
The tight timeline is likely to pressure several listings into the last months of the year.
“The fall is shaping up to be quite active for tech IPOs,” said Jimmy Williams, head of West Coast technology, media and telecom ECM at Jefferies Financial Group Inc. “Board conversations that we are part of have become much more positive about the IPO opportunity and specifically the near-term IPO opportunity.”
Williams now expects around 10 tech IPOs in the US this year, versus 15 to 20 at the start of 2025. Still, he expects this will be a better year than 2024.
“The risk appetite from the buyside is the best we have seen since 2021” when IPO volumes hit record levels, he said.
Improved returns from this year’s class of IPOs could help bring more deals out into the open. Through Wednesday’s US market close, the weighted average share gain from IPOs priced so far in 2025 was 26%, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Shares of companies listed in Asia are up a weighted average of 52%, while European debutants trail with a 26% improvement, and newly listed companies in the US has delivered increase of just 4.9%, the data show.
Sensitive names
While some companies have returned to the front of the IPO pipeline, bankers caution that a number of large listing candidates that are more sensitive to supply chain bottlenecks, or threats of tariff-induced inflation, remain on hold.
StubHub and payments giant Klarna Group Inc. were both ready to go in April prior to the tariff announcement, people familiar with the matter have said. Private equity-backed medical supplies company Medline Inc. was seeking to be valued at as much as US$50 billion in an IPO, Bloomberg News reported last year. None have publicly signaled their plans are back on.
“We are going to be on hold for a bit for the names that are tariff-exposed because the management teams there still need to get a handle on how their cost structures will be impacted, and the buyside needs to flow that new information through their valuations,” JPMorgan’s Canton said.
“We have been hearing that next year is likely to be more positive than the rest of this year, but with markets moving in the right direction and the economy possibly averting a recession, we are seeing a partial thawing,” according to Matt Fry, the co-chair of capital markets at law firm Haynes Boone, which handled the legal work on American Integrity Insurance’s IPO.
Shrugging off tariffs
To be sure, China Inc.’s successful deals were able to shrug off tariffs from the outset. The second largest IPO on a US exchange in April was Chinese tea chain Chagee Holdings Ltd.’s US$473 million offering. Preparations for China-traded battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd.’s listing in Hong Kong, which is set to add more than US$4 billion to the global tally, continued throughout the month.
A big chunk of Hong Kong’s expected listings will come from second floats of China-listed companies like CATL. The wave of IPOs in Hong Kong by so-called A-share issuers is likely to hit in the second half of the year, with 25 firms in the pipeline since the fourth quarter, Citic Securities analysts wrote in a recent note.
A number of Chinese IPO candidates are positioned to weather tariff uncertainty, given that they don’t rely too heavily on US exports. The group includes consumer-sector companies that benefit from China’s measures to prop up its domestic spending, said Richard Wang, a partner and head of China equity capital markets at the law firm Freshfields.
“Mainland Chinese technology and new economy companies, in particular, are attracted to Hong Kong due to the recent success of several tech IPOs and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange’s favorable policies for their listings,” said Dan Ouyang, a partner in Baker McKenzie’s capital markets practice. The Chinese securities regulator’s recent announcement of supporting its companies listing in Hong Kong is likely to add to the growing trend, he said.
The outlook for Chinese share sales for the rest of the year is “cautiously optimistic,” Freshfields’ Wang said.
The cautious part? “US volatility,” Wang said. “Now we’re talking about tariffs, but you don’t know what’s going to be next.”
Expectations also remain high for listings in the Middle East, where low-cost Saudi Arabian airline Flynas Co.’s US$1.1 billion IPO had demand for all the shares on offer within minutes. Bankers in the region say they haven’t seen a significant dent to their deal pipelines because of the US tariffs.
The IPO market in Europe has been comparatively tepid in recent years versus the US, yet it too is seeing a modest revival after the tariff pause.
Portuguese lender Novo Banco SA is “well advanced” in moving towards a listing in June that one report pegged as worth as much as €7 billion, though a sale is also a possibility, Bloomberg News has reported. In London, Cobalt Holdings Plc filed for a US$230 million IPO that could be the city’s biggest listing since 2023. Germany’s Autodoc SE and Swedish betting game developer Hacksaw are also seeking to go public in the coming months.
Another bright spot could be India, where signs of deal activity are emerging even though proceeds are nowhere near last year’s record. Sales of new and existing shares involving Indian companies have raised US$8.5 billion so far this year, less than the US$19.4 billion they raised in the same period in 2024, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Big share sales may still launch in the second half of the year, said Pratik Loonker, head of equity capital markets and co-head of the financial sponsors group at Axis Capital.
Even the simmering India-Pakistan conflict is unlikely to have an effect. “I don’t think markets will have to worry about this issue for at least some time now,” Loonker said.
“It’s a temporary blip,” he said. “Eventually the fear fades away and the greed returns.”
