Bending Spoons’ Big Pop a Good Sign for IPO Candidates

Could it be that Wall Street has a soft spot for refurbished internet brands? Bending Spoons, the Italian company whose stated mission is buying and overhauling left-for-dead digital businesses—such as AOL, Evernote and Vimeo—got a 40% pop on its first day as a public company on Wednesday. It was a much more impressive debut than the 4% pop scored by the other company going public on Wednesday, scooter rental firm Lime.

Both debuts, coming after SpaceX’s spectacular IPO, should reassure other companies looking to go public—including Anthropic and OpenAI—that the IPO market is well and truly open. Of course, the first day doesn’t tell us much: We’d bet Lime stock will sink in the next few days. Renting out scooters and ebikes is a tough business, given the need to spend on replacing and maintaining scooters and ebikes, relatively low margins, fierce competition and intense regulations. Ick.