The Day ServiceTitan Hit the Stock Market

On Thursday, ServiceTitan, a company that provides financial and customer management software for trade businesses, made a splash in the stock market. Its shares started at $71 but quickly rose to $105, and they're still hovering above $100. Does this mean the IPO floodgates are about to open for tech companies? Not so fast. ServiceTitan had a pressing reason to go public. They needed to pay back some of their investors who were getting impatient. The company had agreed to give these investors more stock as penalties if they delayed the IPO past a certain date. They even had to buy back some of these investors' shares at a high price and pay them big dividends. The $71 starting price might not have been enough to avoid all penalties, but it still let ServiceTitan raise a huge amount of money—around $625 million, and possibly even more. This money will help them pay off investors and have some left over for running the business, buying other companies, or anything else they need. ServiceTitan isn't making a profit yet, so they need this cash. Retail investors jumped on this stock on the first day, pushing the price up. This could mean more IPOs are on the way, or it might be great news for other fintech companies waiting to go public. Rudy Yang, a senior analyst at PitchBook, thinks ServiceTitan's debut could inspire other fintech players to follow suit.