Bubble alert? IPOs, VC deals down
New report says the value of VC deals has declined, while another shows that the IPO market for VC-funded companies is nonexistent.
I'll say this upfront: I'm not a good predictor of economic events. That's why I'm a journalist and not on Wall Street. Well, that and I don't like getting up early.
That said, those leery about Web 2.0 looking a lot like Web 1.0 have even more to worry about. As noted earlier this morning, there were no VC-backed companies that went public last quarter, according to a new report from Dow Jones VentureSource.
A second report, looking at the media, information, and marketing services areas showed that, although the number of VC deals in the first half of the year inched up from a year ago, the value of such deals plummeted. There were 404 deals in the first six months of 2008, according to the Jordan Edmiston Group, valued at an average of $23.16 million. That compares to 397 deals in the first half of 2007, with an average value of $65.77 million.
"M&A activity for the first half of 2008 was increasingly cloudy," Adam Gross, a Jordan Edmiston vice president, said in a statement. Gross did point to several bright spots, including in online media and in transactions of less than $1 billion.
Am I onto something or just over-reaching?