Jim Neesen, Managing Partner at Conor Group, shares a bullish outlook on the 2026 IPO market ahead of the 13th annual summit. Neeson highlights strong early-year momentum, with dozens of listings already outpacing last year’s pace and many newly public companies trading well above their debut prices. He points to a robust pipeline fueled by hundreds of unicorns preparing to enter public markets within the next 12–24 months across sectors ranging from tech and healthcare to energy and financial services. The conversation also turns to highly anticipated potential listings from giants like SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, and Stripe, with Neesen noting that while timelines may vary, these firms are well-capitalized and likely to time their market debuts strategically. He describes IPOs as career-defining milestones for companies major events that unite teams, excite investors, and signal that a business has reached the elite tier of its industry.
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And joining me on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange is Jim Neesen, managing partner at Conor Group.
Jim, great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Remy, thank you so much.
It's a pleasure.
Well, we are counting down to the 13th IPO summit right here at the New York Stock Exchange.
So give us a little bit of insight into the IPO market this year.
Yes, absolutely.
I mean, we are seeing a very bullish market.
We're predicting 375 to 400 IPOs, 20% growth over last year, and we're even seeing sort of those signals.
In January and February we've had 66 IPOs so far, 38% increase from the exact same time last year.
And even as we look at sort of this IPO summit, a lot of excitement and preparation getting ready for 26 and 27.
Yes, hard to believe, but already we are edging closer to the second quarter of 2026.
You mentioned January, February.
What have we seen so far?
Yes, you know, I think we've seen a combination of things.
Number one, some really good transactions, specifically the New York Stock Exchange.
We've seen once On a farm foraging Verodynamics as well as Bob's Discount, all of those are trading 20% above their initial IPO price.
16 of the 66 IPOs are what I would call that traditional bucket.
We've seen the stock market also very aggressive.
45 deals have already gone out, and what's been really nice is companies have been able to both price but then have that aftermarket performance.
So I think you're seeing a lot of them, especially now, we have a little bit of a low in February.
Companies are getting their number.
Freshened up for the end of the year, but we're going to see a big push in March, April, and May.
Yes, and Jim, speaking of which, I do want to ask you about the outlook as well as the current pipeline.
So what does all of this tell you about the market health?
Yes, what we're seeing is there is a very substantial pipeline.
We talked about the 1600 unicorns, 800 in the US, but if you even look at this IPO summit that's coming up this week, I mean, we have 119 unicorn companies who are part of our 600 executives.
Over $680 billion and these are companies that are specifically targeting 12 to 24 months to look to get out in the markets.
What I really like too is you see broad industry representation.
You see everything from IT to healthcare, financial services, B2B, B2C, as well as energy and materials.
So a broad cross section of industries, companies getting ready for this next 12 to 24 months.
Yes, and speaking of which, there are several.
Mega IPOs that all of us are keeping our eyes on, namely SpaceX, OpenAI, anthropic data bricks, as well as Stripe.
So what can we actually expect here in terms of timeline?
You know what's interesting is each one of them will have a timeline.
They're going to be raising a very substantial amount of money, right?
It could be in the billions of dollars each.
So I think a lot of it is really finding those long-term investors as they do sort of their testing the waters, as they start talking to sort of institutional investors as well.
A lot of them have very deep cash reserves as private companies, so I think we're going to see that they're going to be opportunistic.
They're going to want to time it properly, but these are companies that could absolutely transform both the technology and the economic landscape for the next decade.
And speaking about the landscape, would you say an IPO is akin to the Super Bowl?
Yes, I definitely would.
I mean, for so many companies, this is a marquee transaction.
It brings the locker room together.
People remember it for their entire careers, but it also for employees and investors and even sort of the customers.
This is a big deal.
This shows that these companies are sort of at the elite forefront of their industry.
We see companies that are preparing a long time, but when it happens, it is pure magic.
Well, Jim, always great talking to you.
Thank you so much for joining us here on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.