Shares in several companies, including Grab Holdings and BuzzFeed, which merged with shell companies to go public, have fallen as investors pull the ground out from under the stock, which has been inflated this year by crazy blank cheque deals on Wall Street.
Shares in BuzzFeed, which has merged with firm 890 5th Avenue Partners, have fallen 40 per cent since their debut on 6 December. The digital media firm raised $16 million of the $288 million in the SPAC trust as 94 per cent of its investors. withdrew their money.
Grab Holdings, Southeast Asia's largest ride-hailing company, has lost half of its market capitalisation since it debuted on the Nasdaq on December 2 in a record $40 billion merger with a manufacturing firm.
"Many investors are now paying more attention to companies that have a proven track record and demonstrated a history of making profits," said Amanda Radebe, senior analyst at CFD stocks. "The frenzy that gave SPACs the momentum we saw earlier this year is clearly gone." Special purpose acquisition companies are shell companies that raise money in an initial public offering (IPO) and place it in a trust to merge with a private firm and take it public.
Because investors do not know about the target company before the IPO, SPACs often give them the right to buy back their initial investment as an incentive to put their money in the trust.
According to Dealogic, the average redemption rate more than doubled in the fourth quarter to 58% compared with the same period last year, as many companies failed to meet investors' high expectations.
In the case of Cvent, an event management software company backed by Zoom Video Communications, almost 85 per cent of investors bought back their shares for cash two days before its debut.
Vacasa, the holiday rental management company, posted gross proceeds of about $340 million from its debut on 8 December, $145 million below its expectations because of the redemption.
CFO Jamie Cohen told Reuters that Vacasa's business is well capitalised by the SPAC deal, as the company has more than 50% cash remaining in its trust account.
"SPACS went crazy in February and investors started looking at them as a meme stock. Then Lucid crashed and the SEC started issuing negative comments and SPACs stopped being popular," said Matthew Tuttle, chief executive of Tuttle Capital Management.
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You are the best….much love.
I love an Ism-Free space! Peace and light.
This is a great policy because now you can make sure that people who don’t agree with you can’t challenge you in front of everyone. You’re awesome!! xxx peace and liberty and love.
actually, it’s a great policy because i don’t have to deal with nitwits like you who think that you’re entitled to be heard simply because you have awesome thoughts about how awesome Greenwald is and also, too free Bradley Manning. You insulted a co-blogger. This is my blog. You don’t have a right to be here. Go back to Salon.
Toodles!
Too many people out there in the world think they have some sort of right to piss on someone else’s living room floor in full view of the entire assembly. Fuck that noise. Stab ‘em hard, ABL.