Publicly traded information technology companies in the U.S., Canada and Bermuda raised $215 million
The December aggregate figure represented a 98.5% drop from the $14.11 billion raised by infotech companies in November 2022.
Most of the capital raised in December came from common equity offerings, which totaled $206.9 million. Senior debt offerings brought in another $8 million, while preferred security offerings accounted for $100,000. That reversed the trend seen in November when debt offerings accounted for most of the infotech capital activity.
The infotech sector's biggest capital raise in December was Clearfield Inc.'s $138 million common stock offering. The telecom equipment maker sold 1,380,000 shares of its common stock at $100 each, with net proceeds expected to be used for working capital and general corporate purposes.
* Read S&P Capital IQ Pro's analysis of the role of private equity firms as consolidators in key technology subsectors.
* Learn more about the multibillion-dollar deal that saved the IT sector's dismal M&A activity in December.
* Visit our Transactions Statistics page to run a custom screen of capital offerings by industry or geography.
In the month's second-largest offering, Ascent Solar Technologies Inc. raised $50 million in gross proceeds from two unnamed institutional investors in a private placement.
Debt offerings dominated the top raises for infotech for most of last year. Concurrent debt offerings from Meta Platforms Inc. in August accounted for the top three largest capital raises of the year. The parent entity of Facebook ultimately raised $10 billion from four debt offerings that month.
Oracle Corp., Apple Inc. and Intel Corp. also each issued three of the sector's largest capital offerings of the year, all of which were debt raises.
Broken down by subsector, semiconductor companies raised the most capital last year with $24.43 billion in aggregate, followed by internet software and services companies with $15.45 billion, and technology hardware, storage and peripherals companies with $9.67 billion. The totals raised in 2022 trailed that for 2021 for each of those sectors.
