Exchange-traded fund (ETF) investors looking to jump head first into funds that focus on initial public offerings shouldn’t be dissuaded by the recent devaluation of real estate company WeWork. The company is set to go public next week, but fluxing valuations are causing investors to fret when trading is set to begin.
Per a CNBC report, “WeWork’s earlier valuation came after SoftBank, the company’s biggest backer, invested $5 billion in primary growth capital and an additional $1 billion in secondary funding.”
For seasoned real estate investors, WeWork is something they’re advising others to approach with due diligence.
“I had the privilege of investing in this kind of company once before. As a matter of fact, this kind of company began in 1956,” said investor Sam Zell, who made nearly $6 billion in the commercial real estate business.
“Every single company in this space has gone broke,” he said, pointing to WeWork’s IPO disclosure last month of net losses of more than $900 million for the first six months of 2019 on revenue of $1.54 billion.
The core business of WeWork centers around renting out work spaces to start-ups and other businesses. According to content from its website, WeWork is “committed to elevating the collective consciousness of the world by expanding happiness and unleashing every human’s superpowers.”
Investors who do want IPO exposure without the added risk of putting their capital into one specific stock can look to ETFs that are IPO-focused. A trade impasse in the U.S.-China trade deal and fears of a global economic slowdown are causing markets to fret when it comes to allocating capital into equities, but that hasn’t stopped a red hot initial public offering (IPO) market. This is helping one IPO-focused ETF be a top performer thus far in 2019.
In fact, some analysts are making it known that an uptick in IPO activity has been correlated with downturns in the S&P 500 over a 12-month period. For investors who want a piece of the IPO action, but don’t necessarily want to assume all the risk associated with investing in a single stock like Uber or Lyft can look to the Renaissance IPO ETF (NYSEArca: IPO).
IPO seeks to replicate the price and yield performance of the Renaissance IPO Index, which is a portfolio of companies that have recently completed an initial public offering (“IPO”) and are listed on a U.S. exchange. Based on Morningstar performance numbers as of Sept. 4, IPO is up 32.54% YTD.
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