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, emerging growth companies that are committed to and capable of becoming public. We provide investors with the ability to participate in a unique fund that allows our stockholders to share in the potential value accretion that we believe typically occurs once a company transforms from private to public status, or what we refer to as the private-public valuation arbitrage.

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 Publicly Traded Fund

Our fund has been structured as a high risk/high return investment vehicle. We seek long-term capital appreciation through investments principally in equity securities that we believe will maximize our total return. Our investment objective is to maximize capital appreciation by making investments in the equity securities of later stage, typically venture capital backed, pre-IPO companies that are committed to and capable of becoming public. We seek to invest in equity securities of principally U.S.-based private companies with equity values between $100 million and $1 billion.

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.