Happy Roger Federer Day!

Hi Folks! 👋

Hope you had a fabulous weekend! Summer is truly a magical time, and I feel so blessed to have spent another beautiful weekend with friends, both old and new. Also, my bestie Jojo is back from Italy. Life is good right now! 

It’s also Roger Federer’s birthday today!!! The legend turns 40! I am one of the real original RF fans or as Kevin Kelly would say, one of the 1000 true fans, and I actually have proof for it. It’s going to make for a bit of an embarrassing confession but here we go.

When I was in grade six and hoping to become a professional tennis player as an adult, I watched Federer play a lot, and idolized him. And then it obviously morphed into a huge crush and as a little girl, I wanted to find a way to give that imaginary love story some credibility. But not like getting a little Roger Federer bracelet or some heart shaped stickers, that would have just been boring. I wanted to do something more creative and thoughtful. And so… what I did was that I set up my first email account and decided to call it rognik@gmaildotcom, where Rog stands for Roger and nik stands for Nikita. (Rog+Nik = rognik voila!)🙈

Yes I did do that. And yes, as many of you who have emailed me know that it is still my only primary email account. So all of you who have asked me over the years what my email stands for, well now you know. I’m kinda embarrassed to admit that, but not really. I remember in university we had this ‘resume and interview prep class’, where they strongly recommended using more professional emails, like nikita.arora@gmaildotcom, but I was like f*ck that! No one comes between me and Roger ❤️ And so, yes I think that does qualify me as a corny but a true Federer fan.

Ok with that confession out of the way, we can get into the spacfessions of the week. Also, welcome to the many new subscribers who signed up last week thinking that this is a relationship blog! Well sorry to disappoint but below are some SPACtacular insights for you to enjoy. It’s been a while since we talked about the broader stats, so thought it was a good opportunity to do a little update post.

395 SPAC IPOs have priced YTD for $117.4B in proceeds vs 248 in all of 2020. They currently represent 61% of the total IPO market in 2021 vs 58% for 2020.

In total, there are currently 430 SPACs with $129B in trust that are seeking acquisitions. 94% of them are trading below trust value with a median price of $9.73.

52% of those SPACs are looking for targets with a TMT or Generalist focus.

There have been 193 mergers announced in 2021 YTD with $491.9B in enterprise value. 171 mergers or 87% of the total deals announced had PIPE commitments worth $54.3B. Median enterprise value of deals closed in 2021 is $1.5B vs $714M in 2020.

94% of the announced mergers are currently trading within 5% of trust value compared to 14% at the February peak.

There have been 58 deal announcements and 62 deals that have closed since June 1st. 36 out of the 62 (58%) are still trading below $10; with the average and median prices of $9.75 and $9.44 respectively.

There have been 7 deal closings per week on average since June. This week has 8 closings on the roster, and a total of 36 mergers are projected to close through the end of August.

The issue of excess supply is still very much a problem, and a cause for the lacklustre performance of the broader asset class. However, it is earnings season and I am looking forward to $MTTR, $MAPS, and $SOFI reporting their numbers this week. Hopefully, they report decent numbers and emerge as the trendsetters in reviving some of the lost faith in SPACs.

And that’s all my dears. Have a great week ahead! And if you’re a true Nikita fan, then do email me to let me know!! 😂

-Nikita