What Europe can learn from Sweden's booming IPO market

While Europe's large fiscal hubs, specified arsenic London, Frankfurt, and Paris, grapple with a prolonged drought successful nationalist listings, the Stockholm Stock Exchange is starring the continent arsenic the hottest marketplace for archetypal nationalist offerings.

Companies listed successful Sweden's superior person raised astir $2 cardinal truthful acold successful 2025 — much than 8 times the measurement seen successful London and importantly outpacing fiscal centers successful Madrid, Zurich, and Frankfurt, according to a CNBC calculation of FactSet data.

The upcoming high-profile listings from location information elephantine Verisure and Nordic lender NOBA person besides highlighted a inclination that experts accidental is the effect of a decades-long process.

The Nordic nation's occurrence is, for the astir part, attributed to a profoundly ingrained nationalist "equity culture", a divers excavation of home superior and a supportive regulatory framework.

It has thing that "you won't find anyplace other successful Europe," said Jens Plenov, caput of equity superior markets (ECM) astatine DNB Carnegie. Plenov's concern slope led the multibillion-dollar IPOs for Asker Healthcare and crippled improvement institution Hacksaw earlier this year.

A large operator of Sweden's IPO boom, Plenov explained, is an "ecosystem of section superior that invests successful section equities and is precise IPO savvy."

This home superior provides a instauration for deals of each sizes.

"If you look astatine the mean retail investor, there's a overmuch larger proportionality of people's wealthiness invested successful the nationalist banal markets," said Kasper Dichow, caput of ECM, concern banking & equities astatine Nordea. "Sweden stands retired successful Europe."

Dichow's squad is progressive successful the upcoming IPOs of NOBA and Verisure.

"If you were successful Stockholm, you'd speech to your taxi driver, and helium volition archer you astir his latest investment," said Plenov. "There's a culture. There's an ecosystem that's built astir it."

This taste vulnerability towards acceptance of the comparative hazard inherent successful equities, compared to bonds, has been achieved done decades of authorities policy.

"I deliberation it starts with the regulation, and that past drives the culture," Nordea's Dichow said. "It's precise overmuch driven by a supportive regulatory environment."

The archetypal Swedish communal funds were launched successful 1958, according to Fondbolagens förening, the Swedish concern money association. But it wasn't until 20 years aboriginal that the instauration of tax-incentivized savings funds kick-started the existent phenomenon. By 1990, determination were 1.7 cardinal money savings accounts successful a state of past conscionable implicit 8.5 cardinal people.

More recently, the instauration of the Investment Savings Account successful 2012 has further cemented the behavioral displacement toward investing successful equities. In contrast, galore pension funds successful the United Kingdom person de-risked their portfolios owed to regularisation and some, specified arsenic ITV's $2.36 cardinal fund, bash not clasp immoderate stocks, according to FactSet data.

In Sweden, the effect of the multidecade process has been a beardown home concern ecosystem.

"Since agelong Sweden maintains a peculiarly progressive equity marketplace successful a European perspective, with precocious information of some Retail and Family Office investors, arsenic good arsenic organization superior managing savings and pension assets," said Nicklas Fharm, caput of equity superior markets astatine SEB.

Fharm led the IPO for concern holding institution Roko earlier this year.

Beyond a consenting public, the businesslike IPO process successful Sweden has besides benefitted from years of accordant woody flow.

For instance, IPOs often diagnostic the usage of "cornerstone" investors — large, reputable institutions that perpetrate important superior aboriginal successful the IPO process. This typically provides a badge of prime for companies looking to spell public.

It besides "gives the [company] certainty rather aboriginal connected and gives the marketplace comfortableness that immoderate prime funds person bought into this and analyzed it," said DNB Carnegie's Plenov. "So, you de-risk the woody early."

Nasdaq, which runs the Stockholm exchange, has likewise made it easier for companies to run a secondary listing successful 1 of its different exchanges successful Copenhagen, Helsinki, Iceland, Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. This enables companies to diversify their capitalist base.

In addition, a dependable proviso of companies backed by backstage equity and task superior firms is filling up the pipeline to spell public.

"A batch of the prime IPO cases are calved retired of backstage equity heritage," said Goran Svensson, caput of equity superior markets successful Sweden for Nordea.

These investors person learned that a palmy listing requires leaving worth connected the array for caller public-market investors.

"The backstage equity satellite has besides learned that taking a institution to the banal marketplace requires determination to beryllium immoderate upside going forward," added Nordea's Dichow. "They cannot compression each dollar retired of it."

For Per Franzen, CEO of backstage equity steadfast EQT, an IPO is an "attractive exit alternative," and his steadfast ensures its portfolio companies are ever "IPO-ready" to maximize their options.

EQT has sold 5.3 cardinal Swiss francs ($6.65 billion) worthy of banal from its portfolio institution Galderma this year, arsenic the skincare giant's shares person risen much than 125% since its IPO successful March 2024.

Despite the flurry of activity, the Sweden's existent IPO roar is lone comparative to a quiescent Europe and remains acold from the market's all-time peak.

The astir $2 cardinal raised successful 2025 to day is dwarfed by the implicit $11.5 cardinal achieved successful Sweden during the planetary IPO frenzy of 2021.

The market's wellness is besides contingent connected the show of its newest members. Investors, wounded by the downturn that followed the 2021 peak, are proceeding with caution.

"At this aboriginal signifier successful the IPO cycle, we spot that investors mostly are being alternatively selective and focusing connected track-record and prospects for profitable growth," noted SEB's Fharm.

For now, the outlook remains positive.

"We're rather assured and affirmative astir the pipeline and what it's going to look similar for the adjacent 12 months," said Nordea's Dichow. "I deliberation the 2026 is expected to beryllium a large IPO year, not conscionable successful Sweden, but crossed the Nordics, with a batch of ample headdress IPOs."