Score it before you buy
The Bastion IPO Health Score
Fourteen questions you can answer before the deal prices, each weighted by what 45 years of data say actually matters. Mix the hard facts (valuation, profitability, scale, deal terms) with your read on the market mood, and get a single 0–100 read on how healthy the IPO looks.
01Is the company profitable?
Profitable IPOs roughly keep pace with the market; unprofitable ones lag badly.
02Trailing 12-month revenue
The smallest-revenue cohorts are the worst performers; scale lowers the penalty.
03How mature is the company?
Bubble cohorts were the youngest (median age 5–6 in 1999–2000) vs. 10–15 in healthy years.
04Price-to-sales at the price you'd actually pay
The single strongest signal: IPOs above 40× revenue underperformed the market by ~58% over 3 years.
05Offer price per share
Low-priced deals are wealth-destroyers: IPOs priced at exactly $5 lagged the market by ~91%, below $5 by ~83%.
06Your entry point
The first-day pop is the seller's number. Buying at the open means you already missed it.
07Business profile
Larger, profitable tech with real revenue has been the bright spot; tiny 'story' stocks the worst.
08Share structure & founder control
Dual-class deals held up better (−7% vs −22%); founder-controlled tech actually beat the market (+14%).
09Deal structure
deSPACs lost more than half their value and trailed the market by ~75% over 3 years.
10Public float
Float ≤10% beat the market by +24.6% from the offer price; floats above 40% lagged.
11Who is backing the deal?
Buyout/growth-capital sponsors barely lagged (≈−1%); plain VC lagged −15%; no sponsor at all was the worst at −32%.
12How euphoric is the IPO market right now?
The hottest IPO windows (1999–2000, 2020–2021) produced the worst cohorts.
Ice-coldFull mania
13How much is the price driven by narrative vs. fundamentals?
Hype premiums unwind. The further from fundamentals, the bigger the long-run drag.
Pure fundamentalsPure narrative
14Your conviction in the business three years out
Durable moat, pricing power and growth you'd underwrite yourself.
NoneVery high
Progress
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Work through all 14 questions. Your score stays hidden until you hit Show Results.
Not investment advice. A screening lens based on Jay R. Ritter's IPO statistics, not a forecast for any single deal.