(News Bulletin 247) – According to the Financial Times, the IPO of the private equity company CVC Partners, planned for November, has been postponed to 2024 due to degraded market conditions.

The biggest IPO of 2023 on European soil will not take place. CVC Partners, which was well on its way to entering the Amsterdam Stock Exchange in the coming weeks, decided at the end of last week to postpone its operation until 2024, reports the Financial Times

However, a few weeks ago the private equity giant was still determined to see this operation through to the end. But the recent turmoil on the financial markets has got the better of what should be the biggest IPO of the year on European soil.

The company planned to raise around 1 billion euros, based on an estimated valuation of 15 billion euros, when the company agreed to sell a minority share of its capital to a division of asset manager Blue Owl, in 2021, the Financial Times reported in a previous article.

“The market conditions are not met,” these sources explain to the Financial Times to justify this postponement. These same sources cite the poor results of the companies EQT, a Swedish comparable, or Blackstone. The uncertainty caused by the conflict in the Middle East and concerns about the state of the economy also tipped the scales in favor of postponing the operation.

The private equity company manages, according to its website, assets representing 160 billion euros with stakes in 120 very diverse unlisted companies.

CVC is particularly known to the general public for having bought the Panzani pasta brand from the Spanish group Ebro Foods last year. CVC also took stakes in the Swiss watch brand Breitling and acquired the cosmetics and makeup group Douglas in 2015.

A first report

At the start of 2022, the private equity company had already wanted to go public but had to give up following market conditions made difficult by the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.

This new postponement constitutes a bad signal for the entire IPO market, already well marked by the recent fiasco of the IPO of sandal manufacturer Birkenstock in New York. Still in the United States, the semiconductor manufacturer Arm and Instacart, the food delivery specialist, are now trading below their IPO price, after a thunderous stock market debut.

The poor performance of the latest contenders on the financial markets is enough to chill potential candidates for an IPO. “The current environment is not favorable to fragile companies that want to go public,” explained Avery Spear, of Capital Renaissance, cited by AFP. The context “is also not conducive to solid companies, because they are unable to obtain the price they want,” she added.

Planisware throws in the towel

In Paris, Planisware also threw in the towel the day before its IPO, on October 11. Here too, the operation was expected by the entire French financial community.

The software publisher was in fact aiming for an entry into compartment A of Euronext Paris – reserved for the largest capitalizations of more than 1 billion euros – which had not seen any new entrants since OVH Groupe, the European leader cloud computing services, in October 2021

“The market environment has recently deteriorated, prompting investors to be extremely cautious,” said Pierre Demonsant, co-founder and president of Planisware.

However, stock market weather alone does not ensure the success of an IPO. These are also the conditions offered to investors (valuation multiples requested) which guarantee or not the success of the project.