Hi Paul,
Nine Entertainment (NEC) – we are glad to have exited NEC in January but after almost then halving into its October low the stock is improving, like so many underperformers are and we wouldn’t be surprised to see a test of ~$1, or 15% higher after it’s better than feared 1Q27 trading update, but it’s still not for us.
Anthropic (ANT US) – while we don’t believe ANT will be anything like the Firmus debacle we believe the prudent course of action is to sit on the fence for now, depending on the final IPO price, if its near US$70 we think it will open with a bang!
What we do know:
Anthropic PBC (NASDAQ: ANT), the US artificial intelligence company behind Claude, is preparing for one of the largest IPOs in history, with a Nasdaq debut in two weeks’ time. The company has set a range of US$70–78 per share for 825 million shares. That would raise up to US$64bn, a concurrent US$26bn placement to Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, AMD, Broadcom, Micron and TSMC lifts expected net proceeds to around US$85bn, and potentially above US$90bn.
Demand looks strong: The book was reportedly fully covered at launch, and reports this week suggest bankers are weighing pricing above the range, which would push the valuation towards US$1.5 trillion or higher. About 20% of the offer is earmarked for retail, including an Australian retail tranche.
- The NASDAQ bounced +2.3% as the demand for ANT rose implying this is not all about smoke and mirrors. We think the IPO has a good chance of doing well, at least initially, but we’ve generally got a preference to wait before making a more definitive call.