The six pre-IPO companies we are reading all have one thing in common
September 7, 2026 | prices as of the September 4 close
Six companies waiting to go public have now stacked up on our scoreboard.
Near the bottom there is a section called On deck: companies whose S-1 we are reading that have not listed yet. Syntiant, Holtec, CoVolt Power, Bamboo Insurance Services, SB Energy and Oura. Five of them have a piece up; the SB Energy one is in preparation.
In the week that began on August 31, three of them filed something. Syntiant filed an amendment on August 31, SB Energy filed its first S-1 on September 1, and Oura filed its first S-1 on September 3. SB Energy filed once more on September 4. That one only added exhibits, and the document says so itself: "This amendment is being filed solely to file exhibits to the Registration Statement." The body of the prospectus did not change.
With all of that movement, one thing is true of all six. Not one of them has a price yet.
When an offering is priced, the company files a document with the form number 424B4. That is the final prospectus. On September 7 we pulled the SEC filing history for all six. Between them there is not a single 424. There is no record yet that any of the registrations has been declared effective.
What you can read before there is a price
None of this means you have to wait for the price.
The Oura piece we published on September 7 is the example. Oura sells a smart ring, worn on the finger, that measures sleep and heart rate, and the company filed its S-1 on September 3. The offering price and the share count are both still blank.
The filing still says this. Revenue for the nine months through June 30, 2026 was $1,214.5 million, up 74% year over year, and net income was positive at $60.8 million.
Over those same nine months the company spent $1,172.9 million buying back its own stock. That is 96.6% of revenue. Most of it went to repurchasing the preferred stock held by pre-IPO investors.
When a company pays more for preferred stock than the amount carried on its books, accounting treats the excess as a dividend to the preferred holders. Here that excess was $985.0 million. Once it is taken out, what is left for common stockholders is a loss of $924.3 million. Divided by the pre-IPO share count, a weighted average of 10.3 million shares, that is $89.53 a share.
A profit and a loss, both correct, in the same document. That gap was readable before any price existed.
The piece is free to read in full.
The side where the answers are in
Higher up the scoreboard are the companies whose answers are in: the eleven companies we have covered that have already listed. The table asks what $1,000 would be worth now if you had bought at the closing price on the day each one listed. It is updated through the close on September 4.
Add up all eleven and $11,000 has become $11,446. The same amount put into the S&P 500 on each of those listing days would be $11,687.
The table only says what the number became. It does not say why. Eleven is a small number to begin with, and these companies have been listed for very different lengths of time. We do not read anything from this table about which kinds of companies rise or fall.
The price comes last
That week was a week of filings, not of answers.
Six companies are lined up with the price left blank, and three of them filed. The price arrives at the very end of that line.
With no price set, there is still something to read. The $89.53 loss per share at Oura could be read on September 3.
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