About Keating Capital

Keating Capital, Inc. (KIPO) is a publicly traded Business Development Company (or BDC) that specializes in making pre-IPO investments in innovative, high growth private companies that are committed to and capable of becoming public. We provide individual investors with the ability to participate in a unique fund that invests in a private company’s later stage, pre-IPO financing round — an opportunity that has historically been reserved for institutional investors. Please click here for a Company Presentation.

Changing IPO Market

The IPO market has changed dramatically over the last two decades. In the 1990s, a total of 4,088 companies went public, raising total gross proceeds of about $292 billion (average IPO size of about $70 million). Fast forward to the 2000s, and total gross proceeds for the decade increased slightly to about $323 billion, but there were only 1,395 IPOs in the period. So over the last 20 years, the number of IPOs has dropped by 66%, but the average IPO size has quadrupled to gross proceeds of over $230 million today, with the average market capitalization for a newly public company now topping $1 billion.

Equity Partners for Private Companies Primed to Become Public

Private companies typically raise a final round of pre-IPO financing to strengthen their balance sheet and demonstrate continued investor commitment. And that’s where Keating Capital fits in: Keating Capital is an equity partner to private companies primed to become public. Keating Capital is a later stage fund that targets private companies (typically with equity values between $100 million and $1 billion) seeking to complete an IPO within 18 months.

Unique Fund

Investors in Keating Capital are able to participate in pre-IPO equity investments which may be acquired at a discount to anticipated IPO prices. Keating Capital intends to invest in the equity securities of private companies at pre-public valuation levels and then sell its shares in the companies in the public markets where they are potentially liquid and where the valuations can be substantially higher. Keating Capital’s event-driven strategy is linked to a company’s transformation from private to public status, which potentially triggers a significant expansion in the company’s valuation multiples. These returns, which Keating Capital believes are independent of the overall stock market return, may potentially exceed returns generated by traditional marketable securities.

Our pre-IPO fund is a unique access vehicle for individual investors seeking the higher risk/high return characteristics typically associated with investing in initial public offerings. To the best of our knowledge, Keating Capital is the only public fund exclusively dedicated to pre-IPO investing in the U.S. Most of our portfolio company investments will typically represent about 5% of our total assets at the time we invest.

Nasdaq Listing

Since we are a publicly listed company (KIPO), investors may buy or sell shares of Keating Capital without causing any changes to be made to the underlying portfolio (as would otherwise be the case with a mutual fund that might have to sell positions to meet redemption requests). And because we do not use borrowed money or leverage to make our investments, Keating Capital never has to worry about margin calls from lenders.

In short, Keating Capital is an equity partner for private companies primed to become public.