Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that Waystar, a healthcare payments software company, has postponed its initial public offering (IPO). The company is in a late stage of the IPO process—it was scheduled to launch its roadshow to pitch potential investors this week, and it’s normal to see a company do its roadshow a week or two before a public listing.
From what I can tell, Waystar is majority owned by private equity firms and was last valued at $2.7 billion in 2019.
This has been a lackluster IPO year, and this postponement is another sign of how challenging things may be for the rest of the year. I’m curious to see how many IPOs are completed in 2023 and what creative ways private equity and venture capital fund managers come up with to get liquidity if the IPO market remains depressed.