It has taken until the 105th day of the year but it will still be “nice as pi” to see London’s IPO market get its second major new listing of 2024, and first of a home grown company.
This is how it should be.
An innovative and pioneering British business gets off the ground, moves into profitability and seeks the deeper funding pools and higher public profile that a main market listing can provide.
With luck Raspberry Pi will be sensibly priced by Peel Hunt and Jefferies, and get away with a nice juicy premium on the first day of trading while investors will enjoy liquidity in the free float shares. Just like the old days.
Of course the bigger question is this: Will this IPO open the floodgates... or will Raspberry Pi prove an isolated second quarter outlier, just as Air Astana did when it briefly raised hopes at its flotation way back in February?
There are perhaps reasons to be more hopeful on that score than even just a month or two ago.
The major revaluation of UK equities of recent weeks does not seem played out just yet. The FTSE 100 powered to yet another all-time high in early trading today and appears in no mood to give up the ground it has gained this year.
That has been driven by a range of factors, the topping out of the US tech boom being one of them, the growing confidence that rate cutting will start on this of the Atlantic another.
The City fund managers, those at the King’s bank Coutts among them, planning to disinvest from the UK, are having to take a hard look at themselves.
A hurried repatriation of funds back to the City would help put more wind under the wings of the London market and, hopefully encourage a queue of businesses ready to list their shares.
No pressure then on Eben Upton and the team from Cambridge. Let’s just hope the market does not blow them a Raspberry.
