European late-stage startups are assessing their IPO plans after US president Donald Trump’s unpredictable tariffs regime wreaked havoc on the public markets.
Trump briefly rolled out an unprecedented package of import taxes on goods shipped into the US earlier this week, destabilising stock markets and sending share prices plummeting around the world.
Swedish fintech giant Klarna had been planning a public float on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) when the tariffs first began to bite — and opted to delay its listing indefinitely, according to reports.
Explaining the company’s rationale, one person close to Klarna previously told Sifted: “These are the two worst days in the market since Covid. Nobody was trying to go public then either.”
But as the market tumult shows few signs of dissipating, Sifted asked some of Europe’s other late-stage tech startups — a number of which were said to be planning to float — whether the chaos of the past few days had impacted their IPO plans.
In an interview with Sifted, the CEO of one leading French tech startup — who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the need to protect their company’s future prospects — says they are watching the markets closely. “Thankfully we weren’t planning to go public for at least another 18 months, so we’re not too worried for now.”
Speaking before the US president instituted a 90-day pause on most of the tariffs, they told Sifted: “I really thought Trump was bluffing and he was going to pull back. If this continues much longer than expected, we don’t know what will happen.”
The worst time to IPO
For some tech leaders, the collapsing share prices brought about by Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” — in which the president unveiled another punishing set of tariffs on America’s trading partners — are familiar territory.
“When you’re in crypto, this is not really shocking at all,” says Eric Demuth, CEO of Austrian cryptocurrency trading platform Bitpanda, which has also been earmarked for an IPO.
“If your business has a strategy and it’s doing well, and suddenly there’s an external factor that keeps you from it, just postpone it,” Demuth tells Sifted. “Klarna was ready to go, they wanted to do it and they will do it when they are ready.”
He adds: “I don’t think there will be any tech or fintech IPOs this quarter, for sure. This is literally the worst time to do an IPO.”
Speaking to Sifted last week, Monzo’s newly-hired CFO Tom Oldham played down the likelihood the company would go public any time soon. “Right now, I am focused on leading the business through this incredibly exciting period of growth and opportunity,” he said.
“We’ll make a great public company one day but it’s still far too early to talk about the specifics.”
At the start of the year, speculation was rife over when and where Revolut, another of the UK’s leading neobanks, would IPO. Onlookers expected Revolut to list on the NYSE after CEO Nik Storonsky branded the idea of a London float “not rational”.
It remains unclear how the fallout from Trump’s tariffs have impacted Revolut’s IPO plans. The company declined to comment.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/donald-trump-tariffs-ipo-tech-startups-europe/
