It’s hump day, and that’s as good a reason as any to look at five of the most intriguing IPOs we’re tracking this year, and what they mean for our world:
- 🇨🇳 CATL – China’s battery giant
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd, or CATL among friends, is raising $4B via Hong Kong from next week, in what’s the world’s biggest IPO so far this year.
Why we’re interested – CATL is the world’s biggest EV battery-maker, making it not only key to the world’s energy transition, but also a target of a) US tariffs since 2018, and b) Biden’s incentives for more US-made alternatives. So it’s been more focused on Europe.
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But that puts Europe in a bind, as the continent tries to balance its immediate thirst for tech, investment, and local production, versus its longer term desire to curb any dependence on China. You can see that bind in Europe’s mix of local incentives plus tariffs on China-made cars, as well as CATL’s response via local plants in Germany and Hungary.
2. 🇯🇵 JX Advanced Metals – Japan’s chip metals guru
JX Advanced Metals raised a cool $3B in March — Japan’s biggest IPO in seven years.
Why we’re interested – JX obviously does metals (advanced ones, to be precise), but its top customers include chipmakers. That’s why its decision to go public was a surprise given some of its presumed clients (think Samsung, Intel) are on struggle street right now. It’s down 7% since IPO.
3. 🇩🇪 Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) – Germany’s naval player
Thyssenkrupp chief Miguel López has revealed he’s looking to spin off his naval division into a new firm this year, streamlining operations and raising cash to ride Europe’s re-arming (plus offload a bit of debt while he’s at it).
Why we’re interested – TKMS is just one of dozens more defence and aerospace firms in the IPO pipeline, as the private sector picks up what spooked governments are putting down (“help”). Markets are also now awash with managers loosening their ethical rules, as investors both a) get FOMO, and b) re-think defence’s role in a free world under pressure.
4. 🇺🇸 Venture Global – America’s LNG underdog
LNG exporter Venture Global raised $1.75B back in January, but quickly became a cautionary tale after its shares tanked over 60%.
Why we’re interested – You might expect an LNG player like Venture to go to the moon on Trump’s ‘drill, baby drill’, but it’s a little more nuanced: there are some specific Venture issues at play, but also — it’s an increasingly competitive sector with over-supply risks ahead, while Europe’s mild winter and healthy storage levels have curbed demand.
Still, Trump 2.0 is already shaping the firm’s fortunes, approving a massive new facility in Louisiana as the firm bets on decades more LNG demand ahead.
5. 🇨🇳 Shein – China’s fast-fashion colossus
The $50B provider of everything from mankini-clad garden gnomes to shark slippers for hamsters had wanted to raise in the US last year, until it hit interlinked regulatory, political, and geopolitical walls.
It then set its eyes on London’s hungrier IPO market and just got approvals last month, but chatter is really quietening down as Shein grapples with Trump’s new tariffs, plus continued British scrutiny over the firm’s human rights record.
Why we’re interested – Shein is the perfect example of a firm upended overnight by geopolitics: pre-Liberation Day, it could sell to US consumers mostly duty-free. That’s why Shein and Temu sent 1.4 billion packages to the US last year. But of course, it was tough for US firms to compete — how do you make a garden gnome in a mankini for $2?
Or come to think of it, why?
INTRIGUE’S TAKE
IPOs offer some sharp signals on where our world is headed. Here are three:
- ESG (environmental, social, and governance) concerns keep evolving: while there’s growing scrutiny on how firms like Shein can do their thing, there’s arguably less on how or why TKMS (defence) and Venture (energy) now do theirs. But geopolitical drivers sit behind all three evolutions, in our view.
2. Local politics can be existential: the US is Shein’s biggest market, accounting for up to half its $40B global revenue. So Shein is facing a massive hit this year, though solutions are also local — the firm already opened hubs in Indiana and California plus a logistics facility in Washington state, partly to curb its exposure.
3. Longer-term trends still hold: our world is still fundamentally worried about longer-term energy security, particularly as data centres fuel demand. And you can see that in the figures: the energy sector’s IPO pipeline has more than doubled year-on-year, but actual completed listings have dropped — that’s long-term optimism clashing with some immediate volatility and uncertainty.