Web domain purveyor GoDaddy (GDDY) began trading publicly today and shares are up more than 30% from the IPO price.
As Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Michael Santoli notes, there was plenty of skepticism surrounding the company ahead of today's first day on the NYSE. In a world of fancy apps and must-have gadgets a mature tech company with nothing to offer but your favorite domain name ran the risk of coming out of the gates with a thud.
“There’s just not that much product out there and people are looking for things to goose their portfolio. They’re looking for new names,” says Yahoo Finance Editor in Chief Andy Serwer.
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The companies that are making it to the publically traded arena aren’t what they used to be either.
“Most of the companies coming public are recognizable,” Santoli notes. “They have some kind of scale. We used to see a lot of $50 million IPOs. We don’t see that anymore.”
So even an Etsy, which begins it’s IPO roadshow today and looks to raise somewhere around $260 million in its offering is “something that has a recognizable brand at this point,” Santoli says.
And that is the key whether with GoDaddy, recent success Shake Shack (SHAK) or upcoming names like Etsy. “If it’s a real business it’s a real business,” Serwer says. “It reminds me of what people were saying about eBay (EBAY) years and year ago and that turned out to be a real business.”
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