PE Deals Set to Boost IPO Market Momentum in 2025, Euronext Says

(Bloomberg) -- Pan-European stock exchange Euronext NV is upbeat about initial public offerings next year as private equity funds are increasingly looking to equity markets to exit the businesses they own.

“There’s a real need for them to return capital” to their investors, Mathieu Caron, head of primary markets at Euronext, said in an interview on Monday.

Euronext, which operates exchanges in Paris, Amsterdam, Milan, Brussels, Dublin, Lisbon and Oslo, said it became home to 53 new companies in 2024, which jointly raised €3.9 billion ($4.1 billion) of capital, a 55% increase over last year.

For 2025, Caron said he expects sectors including the defense industry, tech and green energy to remain active in IPO markets. Meanwhile, spinoffs like those implemented by Vivendi SE and Sodexo could continue as conglomerates seek to rationalize their assets.

“We think we will have a year in 2025 which will be better both in terms of the number of deals and of the amount of capital,” Caron said.

Caron said that the average time of ownership of businesses acquired by private equity funds was putting pressure on managers to cash out, and the stock market had proved an efficient way to do this in 2024. IPOs and selldowns in companies backed by private equity funds and similar investors raised more than $25 billion of gross proceeds this year across Europe, a 80% jump from all of 2023, according to Bloomberg calculations made mid-December.

French software firm Planisware SA and Swiss skincare giant Galderma Group AG were among the major deals in 2024 by companies with PE-backers.

--With assistance from Pablo Mayo Cerqueiro.