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In this episode of #StreetsTalksTo we are joined by Dani Lipkin and Delilah Panio from the TMX Group. We delve into the global listings landscape, the TSX and the TSX Venture Exchanges and their support for earlier stage firms and established companies in their journey to going public.
We touch on Canada’s history of supporting the innovation economies and discuss TSX Venture’s unique value proposition in helping scale-up firms access growth capital, reduce the burden and cost of going public. We look at lessons we can learn from Canada, as the UK and other jurisdictions are assessing their IPO rules to attract more junior listings.
We discover the 4 Rs – reason, readiness, requirement and reality – that can help decide whether your company is ready to go public and the benefits of being aligned. Finally, we look at the entire listings journey, as many firms have successfully graduated from the TSX Venture Exchange onto TSX, and have gone on to dual list in the US and on other major exchanges.
Dani Lipkin carries the role of Managing Director, Global Innovation Sector for Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV). In this capacity, he is responsible for working with private companies and their shareholders as they explore and consider the option of raising equity capital in Canada. Prior to this role, Dani was the Head of Business Development for Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and Investment Funds on TSX. He had also worked with the listings group for TSX, where he helped assist companies in going public.
Delilah Panio is Vice President of U.S. Capital Formation for Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) based in Southern California. In this role, Delilah advises U.S. companies on the opportunity to list and raise capital on Canada’s premier equity markets. Previously, Delilah spent 10 years at TSX and TSXV in business development and strategy. She has advised many companies on the going public process and provides an understanding of private and public financing options in Canada and the U.S. Delilah is also the founder of Fortuna Funding which provides practical and intentional guidance on accessing aligned capital, particularly for female founders. She is a frequent speaker and pitch competition judge and coach, and recently partnered with UBS and SheEO on Project Female Founder. Delilah is currently Chair of the Funding Committee for Women Leaders of Octane and an Advisory Board Member for MAPLE Business Council (a trade organization between Canada and Southern California), WE Global (an innovation studio for women entrepreneurs), and The Allyship (driving change for women in venture capital). She is an Activator for Coralus (formerly SheEO) and led the 2016 US launch for this financing vehicle for female and non-binary founders. Delilah is also the Executive Director and Co-Founder of We Are Enough, a non-profit that educates women on why and how to invest in women-owned businesses and/or with a gender lens, which will be launching a global campaign next year.
Julia: Hello, my name is Julia Streets, and welcome to the podcast series, StreetsTalksTo. In every episode I interview leaders from some of the most influential firms, bodies, and initiatives in the financial services industry. On each episode, we explore what’s at the very forefront of innovation and change, and we think about the challenges facing our clients and our businesses and the industry at large. We uncover the opportunities that exist both today and as we look ahead, particularly as we all navigate these interesting times.
We hope you enjoy the series, which you can find on all good podcast channels and all the episodes are listed on our website, streetsconsulting.com. Y§ou can find these episodes on social media using the #StreetsTalksTo. Thank you for listening and welcome to StreetsTalksTo TMX Group.
TMX Group builds markets to enable businesses and investors to succeed and to help communities to thrive. Their mission is to power capital and commodity markets with client-centric technology-driven global solutions with a vision to be an indispensable solution for companies around the world to raise capital and to become the preferred destination for traders and investors to prosper. When we talk about TMX Group, it includes companies such as the Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange and a multitude of other businesses all around the capital markets world.
Allow me to introduce my two guests today I’m delighted to be joined by Dani Lipkin and Delilah Panio. Dani Lipkin carries the role of Managing Director of global innovation sector for Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange. And in this capacity, he is responsible for working with private companies and their shareholders as they explore and consider the option of raising equity capital in Canada. Prior to this role, Dani was the Head of Business Development for exchange traded funds or ETFs and investment funds on TSX. He also worked with a listings group for TSX where he helped assist companies in go public. So Dani, it’s great to have you on the show. Thank you for being with us.
Dani: Thanks, Julia. It’s great to be here and really appreciate the opportunity to indulge your listeners in the Canadian ways, the very polite Canadian ways. We’ll be very polite throughout this.
Julia: I love that. I’ll tell you what, it’s a very, very timely discussion and I’m very curious to think about what we can learn from the Canadian markets as well. But you don’t really have to be polite on my account, put it that way.
Joining Dani today is Delilah Panio. She’s the Vice President of US Capital Formation for the Toronto Stock Exchange and the TSX Venture Exchange. She’s based in southern California. And in this role, Delilah advises US companies on the opportunity to list and raise capital on Canada’s premier equity markets.
Previously, Delilah spent 10 years at TSX and TSX Venture Exchange in business development and strategy and she has advised many companies on the going public process and provides an understanding of public and private financing options in both Canada and the US.
I should also mention that she’s the founder of Fortuna Funding, which provides practical and intentional guidance on accessing aligned capital, particularly for female founders. I know she does a lot in the industry about helping female entrepreneurs access capital and particularly in a world where access is not always equal. Delilah, great to have you on the show. Thanks so much for your time.
Delilah: Thank you. It’s such a pleasure to be here. And while I am Canadian, I’ve been living in the US for 10 years, so I may be a little bit less polite.
Julia: I’m looking forward to a really stimulating discussion because as I said just a second ago, it just feels really very much of its time because we’re thinking really about the discussions, particularly here in the UK, but we have listeners all over the world about access to capital for startups and scale up companies. And this is certainly intensified of late when we’re thinking about the FinTech landscape where there have been some rumours and some evidence, some would argue of a downturn in investment and also on a global scale because it is challenging to secure growth capital, particularly in tougher economic times as well.
Just for the benefit of our UK listeners, in March this year, the treasury announced a review into UK listings to enhance London’s status as Europe’s leading listings destination. And this is all about trying to jumpstart this market after a global decline in IPOs.
Part of this could be about streamlining the regulatory regime to attract more startups and foreign issuers to London, particularly thinking about early stage businesses. One of the reasons why I’m very excited about this episode because I think there’s a lot that we can all learn from the way in which the Canadian model works. And also as I’ve been preparing for this, there’s a lot that I hadn’t understood and appreciated, particularly the Canadian markets and their role globally.
Well, let’s get straight into it, Dani. You’re Global Head of Innovation. You are really thinking about this on an international scale. Talk to us about what you see going on in listings and IPOs and what should we be thinking about?
Dani: What a lot of people throughout the world know is the main senior markets throughout the world. New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, Toronto Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange. But what we actually have in Canada is a very unique system where we have a two-tiered marketplace. The Toronto Stock Exchange for later stage multi-billion, multi-national companies and then also the TSX Venture Exchange which is meant for earlier stage growth companies.
This is an exchange through different iterations and we’re not going to have to go through the whole hundred-year history of the capital markets in Canada today. We could do another 15-minute podcast on that one day. But it’s evolved over the last hundred years to really form the backbone of supporting these early stage types companies. Canada is very much involved in the natural resource economy and that is the backbone of a lot of GDP in Canada overall.
For the last a hundred years, it’s been very good at supporting earlier stage junior mining, exploration, oil and gas type companies to help them go public at an earlier stage. What we’ve seen evolve over the last decade or so is that it’s actually powering out the innovation economy. So think of earlier stage technology, clean tech, life sciences companies, ones that are really going to make fundamental changes in making our whole world better hopefully and more efficient.
TSX Venture now has really become this preeminent exchange for helping both Canadian and international companies access capital, go public at an earlier stage and we’ll get into how their regulatory regime works in Canada, that it makes it affordable overall relative to some other places in the world and really give them that necessary capital to appeal their next round of growth and hopefully soon after that access more capital. Because at the end of the day, the public pool of capital is the largest source of capital in the world.
Julia: It’s interesting, the dynamics that are beginning to flow through that in terms of regulatory regime and then also the cost of accessing capital as well. Delilah, I’d love to bring you in here because as I mentioned in the introduction, you are specifically working with US companies and I’m curious about that because I would imagine that US companies would naturally gravitate towards US exchanges. Just talk to us about some of the dynamics around that and particularly keen to explore the pathways and the options.
Delilah: Such an excellent question, Julia, because of course the question is why in the world would a US company be looking outside of the largest capital market in the world to access capital? There’s a couple of key points on that. The first one really is that every entrepreneur and CEO today needs to know all of their options. You alluded to earlier we’re in very interesting, challenging finance times both in the public and private markets globally, so it really is important for all CEOs to know all of their capital raising options of which for US companies and UK companies, TSX and TSX Venture are definitely a viable option for the right company.
The second thing, and this is, i’ll be curious to know more about this from the UK, but in the US the early stage US capital markets are just not serving a specific segment of growth companies. When I’m talking to US CEOs, these are companies that are looking for an alternative to some of the current options either in the public markets in the US or they’re looking for an alternative to private venture capital, which of course has an incredibly important role in the finance world, but there are CEOs and founders who are looking for an alternative, who are looking to maintain greater control of their company and are looking to access a different kind of capital.
Uniquely, TSX venture especially provides a unique value proposition for US companies, and I would suspect for UK companies as well in terms of looking for permanent capital, looking for growth capital, looking for acquisition currency. Probably the number one reason that an early stage company would think about going public is to access that important acquisition currency to make acquisitions using their public stock. And this concept of flattening the cap table. Looking for a way to bring in diversified investors, bring in the public investors at their marketplace and having a flat cap table of common shareholders can be a really beneficial strategy for the right kind of high growth company.
Julia: Dani, can I ask you to expand on that a little bit? Because I’m really curious about understanding, as Delilah was saying, the reasons for it and the importance of every entrepreneur to know the different types of capital and also the compelling reasons why. What I suppose my next question for that would be why has Canada been so successful in achieving this? Could you just expand on that a bit more?
Dani: I’ll start with the question around capital. And we speak to entrepreneurs both in Canada and globally, whether they’re private or public. And no matter what, the number one issue that they always speak about is access to capital and being able to fund their businesses overall. Sure, we had a very good two or three years, both public and private markets for being able to access capital, but we know that we go through waves and cycles where it’s going to be easy at times, but most of the time it’s actually going to be a little bit challenging.
No matter how good a company you are. You can be the best company in the world and you still want to raise capital at the best terms for yourselves as entrepreneurs, founders, and investors overall. With that in mind, we have developed, as I had mentioned before, a TSX venture exchange, which has been set up through the years through a merger of some of the regional exchanges that existed in Vancouver, Montreal, and Canada.
It’s a very pragmatic exchange from a regulatory perspective because generally speaking it can be pretty costly to run a public company because of accounting standard, because of reporting obligations. You know need to disclose Folsom on a quarterly, semi-annual and annual basis, different types of documents overall. What TSXV has been set up to do and this is in conjunction with our regulators in Canada and that’s a very key component is it’s termed as a junior venture exchange, meaning that there are less onerous requirements on those companies being public in Canada relative for example, to companies that would be listed on TSX or our senior exchange.
So that means you have longer periods to file your disclosure documents both quarterly and annually. There are certain types of documents which you may or may not have to actually file. It’s really set up to understand that these companies don’t have necessarily the capacity of being able to adhere to those higher standards overall.
We see that that actually helps reduce the burden and cost of being public but still avails itself to having those same types of investors who want to invest in public market companies be able to participate in investing in these earlier stage companies overall. I think it also might just help to give a bit of context to keep talking about the differences between TSX, TSXV. I’m going to throw out 55,000 numbers here in the next 20 minutes, so I hope you remember them all. But let’s just start with a couple really key facts and figures.
TSX, to give this context of how big they are relative to TSXV, the average market value of a company on TSX is 2.1 billion. The average financing size would be about $50 million. On TSX Venture, the average market cap is closer to about $50 million and the average financing size is about four to $5 million.
That gives you the narrative around what types of companies would be on TSX versus TSX Venture. And the most important thing about why TSX Venture also works so well is that we are looking to help and grow all those TSX venture companies to graduate and list on TSX. And this has been a hugely successful program over the course of last 20 years where we’ve seen over 750 companies actually graduate from TSX Venture to TSX.
The other valuable important stat is that if you look at our SMP TSX composite, which is approximately the largest 240 companies in Canada, 20% of those companies actually started life as a TSX venture company. So we’re very good at supporting those small, medium-sized businesses, helping them grow and becoming some of Canada’s largest companies overall talking into the multi-billion dollars overall. That’s the investor appetite of supporting those types of companies to fund them when they need a few million dollars.
We understand. We call it public venture capital. We don’t say every company’s going to succeed. Companies will fail. We are very transparent about this, but this gives them a great chance of succeeding overall and really being able to become those big companies while not fearing that, “Hey, I’m going to be spending all my life being a public company from a reporting issuer’s status.” That is not how the companies will feel overall.
Julia: It’s really helpful to hear you talk about the sort of structure. Delilah, I know you are super keen to come in here, so take it away.
Delilah: I just wanted to add on that specifically for international companies for whether they’re the UK or the US, you’re looking at as Dani had described this really unique incubator, public venture capital exchange with a pathway to graduate to a senior Toronto stock exchange and then the opportunity to do a list onto a senior US exchange. We know that US companies, probably UK companies don’t grow up thinking I want to list on TSX.
What they want to do is ultimately get to the largest capital market in the world, which is in the US, a US exchange. So we are unabashedly an extraordinary growth strategy to get to that milestone. For US companies, this pathway of starting on TSX venture exchange when you’re raising your series B capital, doing a couple of rounds of financing on TSX venture, graduating to Toronto stock exchange. And when you’re big enough and relevant enough, do a listing on to a US senior exchange.
We have a unique value proposition of something called the multi-jurisdiction disclosure system where once you’re trading on TSXV or TSX for a year, there’s a very streamlined path to do a list on to a senior US exchange. So that path has been well worn by Canadian companies, by US companies, by international companies, and it’s a true opportunity for international companies to look at how do we ultimately get to a US senior exchange. And the Canadian markets are definitely a pathway for the right kind of company and should definitely be considered.
Julia: Well, it’s interesting ’cause I was thinking while you were both talking about, you started with that remark, Delilah, talking very much about incubation. It’s about the journey of growth and scale. And then I was curious about the dual listing opportunity that exists out there as well. But I want come back to another remark you made earlier about, you called it flattening the cap table and about diversifying your investor base if you like as an entrepreneur and as a business as well.
I’d love to get your thoughts and perhaps, Delilah, I could stay with you on that, is this institutional versus retail point of view. I’m curious about what is the appetite for retail investment, particularly in these early stage companies as they go from the journey you’ve just described?
Delilah: Well, the practical reality for early stage public companies is that they need a robust retail investor base because these are small investments at low share prices not buying a lot. So a lot of institutional investors have rules and parameters around how the minimum they can invest. So that sometimes precludes them from some of these early stage companies because of the size of the investment.
Why it works so well in Canada is we still have a very robust retail investor base and there is a very significant segment of our investor marketplace that is interested in what we call high growth momentum emerging sectors. So whatever the hot sectors of the time are, whether that was we had the cannabis boom or if it’s cryptocurrency or Bitcoin, we launched the first Bitcoin ETF in the world on TSX.
So we do have an investor base that’s just really interested in whatever is the most latest interesting high growth momentum kind of sectors because this gives retail investors an opportunity to act like many venture capitalists to get in on those deals early and to realise the growth and the appreciation for the ones that make it.
In the US this has been something that has deteriorated over time, the retail investor base and the death of the small cap IPO in that. These investors in Canada have the opportunity to take advantage of that. A really interesting note is that over 40% of our trading on TSX and TSX Metro actually comes from outside of Canada.
While you are accessing this incredible investor base in Canada that might be interested in your early stage company, we also are home to many, many investors internationally that are also looking to the Canadian markets for those emerging sectors in all markets.
Julia: While you’re talking there, I’ve just got to have this interesting narrative arc if you like a true presenter. They’re always about the narrative arc of the journey of TSX going from natural resources as a history as you say, we don’t have time for history lesson or the exchange, but very much in natural resources and now to the world of ESG and of course some of those, the green tech, the climate tech, the innovation around climate change of course, which is really fascinating thinking about those early stage businesses that are just going to come to the fore right now.
It seems like a natural home if you like. But I can’t help but be slightly cynical about it because I just think we mentioned earlier that not every organisation, every business succeeds, so therefore the risk to the retail investor of getting involved, but also it’s not necessarily right for every organisation.
Dani, can you just paint a picture of what is the ideal organisation? We were talking about helping entrepreneurs to understand their capital raising pathways. Who does this make sense for? Just explore that a little bit more if you would.
Dani: Who this is for is a company that really requires growth type of capital. If it’s a nice business that’s maybe been family run and the only reason that they’re looking to go public is a pure liquidity event and there’s not a lot of growth in it. Investors tend to ask why would I invest in a company that everybody’s looking to exit and that sure, maybe it’s nice, but why am I taking somebody else’s company who doesn’t want it anymore?
We speak to entrepreneurs who are at that earlier type stage and have a bit of traction overall, so maybe a few million dollars in revenue but need that next level of capital. So whether it be five, $10-15 million that will take them to that next stage of growth overall and know that, hey, it’s not going to just be this next round of capital, but they’re going to want to raise subsequently more money over the coming years overall and that there’s real potential overall of this company becoming a unicorn.
That’s what we want to see is these are going to become some of the biggest companies, hopefully not just in Canada, but in the world. So that’s the type of entrepreneurial mindset that we look to see and talk to with companies when we’re discussing the potential of them going public overall. And the other item that we talk to companies a lot about is you don’t necessarily have to have public company market experience.
Something that’s very unique to how these companies actually go public is our CPC, capital pool company program, which essentially is a listed vehicle with a lot of people that have public company experience and then they take that private company public through the capital pool company and help them navigate the public markets overall because that’s a lot of times where an entrepreneur will feel a little bit uncomfortable of going public because they don’t feel like they have the necessary background to run that public company. So our capital pool company tries to match these types of experts in the public markets with great entrepreneurs and founders, help them come together and run a great public company overall.
Julia: It’s helpful to hear you talk about that because actually there’s this whole ambition to becoming a unicorn, but also almost like the democratisation of finance that goes around that as well. Delilah, did you want to come in and add any remarks to that? I’d love to get your thoughts.
Delilah: What we talk about to help entrepreneurs determine is this the right path for them. So especially when I’m talking to the US CEOs, again, getting them interested in the Canadian public markets, getting them to think about another option. I run them through what I call the 4Rs, which is just easy to retain information as we’re all overwhelmed with all the information these days.
The first one is reason. Does your company have a reason to be public on any market? What that means is would the company benefit from being a public company, some of those things I mentioned, which is access to permanent capital acquisition currency, diversifying shareholder base, and also having the credibility of being recognised on being on an international stock exchange. Someone has looked at your company. Someone has vetted your company. And sometimes that can be a significant benefit including to your customers if you’re working with bigger B2B customers.
Should your company even go public? And then should it go public in Canada? Is there a reason for the Canadian markets that that’s a fit? The second R is readiness. So is my company ready to go public and be public? Listen, as we know, being a public company is not for the faint of heart, especially in these markets. So is my company ready? Is the management team the right management team? Does our CFO have public company experience?
Do we have the right board of directors to be a public board versus a private advisory board? Are we ready for the transparency? This is probably one of the most challenging things about being a public company is now everybody knows your financial situation, your status. So are you ready for that? Now, we can also argue that that creates a significant discipline within a company that is often very beneficial.
It requires internal controls being developed and a discipline that actually can help a company stay on track better than some of the private companies we’ve seen that get to be quite large. And then we realise, “Wow, they could have really benefited from some internal control discipline there.” So is the company ready to be public? Is the CEO ready to spend at least 30% of his or her time talking to investors?
Who’s running the company while you know you have to do the investor relations and run the public company part? So is the company ready? The third R is requirement. Does the company meet the exchanges listing requirements? Again, what’s unique about the Canadian markets for TSX and TSX Venture is our listing requirements are based on the financial fundamentals of the company.
We’re looking at revenue, net tangible assets, working capital. And especially for TSX venture. I know shocking for many to know that you can list as a pre-revenue company. So we have been listing very early stage exploration companies whether that’s exploration of mining or technology, or biotech. We have a listing regime and a process and requirements that are tailored to very early stage micro cap companies including pre-revenue.If you’re a pre-revenue company, then we’re going to be looking at working cap, which will often come on the raise on the going public transactions. When the company lists on our market, whether it says an IPO or through a reverse takeover or through our capital pool company program, do they have the enough capital, working capital to keep the lights on for a period of time to give the company a real shot of growing and also the investors and opportunity to realise their growth.
And then the last R, which ultimately is the most important one because you can have every reason to be public, you can be ready to be public, you can meet our listing requirements, but what is the reality? That first fourth R is reality, which is can this deal get done in today’s market? And that of course shifts with time and markets. 2021, I was having a different conversation with companies than I’m having in 2023. It’s really what can investment bankers sell to their investors? What can other capital providers share the investment opportunity with their investor base.
That shifts by the markets. And so we’re in, again, a very different market we were last year and we’ll be in a different market next year. And part of my job is being ahead of that curve of thinking about, “Okay. What kind of companies can get financed in the next six to 12 months because that’s how long it typically will take for a company to list.”
Julia: I’m really curious, what sort of patterns, what sort of trends, what sort of opportunities do you see emerging?
Dani: As Delilah had mentioned, we see different trends throughout the years. One sector may be hot now, but then it’s not in favour as much anymore. We saw a lot of maybe earlier stage type tech companies be able to access the public markets at good valuations a few years ago. But now I think what we’re seeing from what investors want is more stable cash flow, really having positive EBITDA overall.
Maybe the burn rates have to be a bit lower than they used to be a couple years ago. And there is a lot of interest in critical minerals, EV batteries, everything that’s spewing the electric vehicle ecosystem overall charging stations. That’s a really big interest because there hasn’t been a ton of capital deployed yet in Canada, North America and globally to really support the entire infrastructure around the electric vehicle system overall.
One thing I also wanted to go back with a comment that Delilah had made is this whole getting ready for the markets overall. You don’t just overnight decide, “Hey, I’m going to go public.” It does take a bit of time and journey and it’s good to be ready because you never know when market windows are actually going to open overall.
I was sitting in this same spot in March 2020, I think I was going to be out of a job that companies weren’t really going to be going public much as the world was not doing so well. There, we went on one of the biggest bull runs in public markets history. We saw one of the biggest record listing years ever. Companies that weren’t ready to go public because they hadn’t been thinking about it before, really missed that opportunity and window.
Now, it will come again. But that was a missed opportunity for companies to go out and raise money on the public markets and very great valuations overall. So we always talk about being prepared because you don’t know when you might actually need or want to go public overall. But as Delilah mentioned before, acting like a public company now is really great for discipline and control and it doesn’t hurt you as a private company to act and be like a public company because those are looked upon as some of the greatest companies in the world because they know exactly what’s going on both for the past little while and leading in lagging indicators of how they’re going to do over the next few months and years because they’re telling the street how they think they’ll be doing overall. So it is great discipline for companies and we tell all companies, if you’re never going to go public, act like a public company, it is in your best interest overall.
Julia: Of course, one of the biggest conversations that people are having right now is about governance, the rigour of governance. And of course that fits firmly into that. The wonderful thing about podcast is that we get a chance to really explore things in so many different directions, but unfortunately the clock is never our friend on these episodes. But I just wonder if you had any sort of final thoughts really as we close out and we look at the pathway ahead, what are you thinking about? What are you excited about? What should our listeners be thinking about? Delilah, can I come to you first?
Delilah: I would say for high growth companies, again looking at all their options, of which the Canadian markets are definitely one. What I’m thinking about is spending my time on here in the US in terms of the companies that I’m focusing on and betting on when the markets really open up again. Companies that have a really good public company’s story to tell. Retail investors, institutional investors who want to access those great growth stories.
Some of the trends that we’re seeing here in the US that I’m following very closely, obviously, the significant investment into renewable energies and clean tech companies as we know what’s happening with the federal government here in the US pouring billions of dollars into that sector.
Again, investors are looking for those companies that are getting that funding and are going to be the companies that go beyond that funding into the public market. I’m definitely spending a lot on them and certainly being here in southern California, the epicentre of innovation in clean energy and also in the areas of AgTech, food security as we all know that that’s a growing concern for all of us globally.
Those are some of the sectors that I’m looking at within the US and just again, I really, really enjoy educating entrepreneurs on all of their options. And when they are surprised to hear about the significance of the Canadian capital markets, we punch well above our weight for a very small low populated country of the amount of money that flows through our markets and that we have a stable market, a stable government, and as investors, it’s a really important home also to think about for some of their investment decisions.
Julia: Delilah, inspiring words for sure. And Dani, why don’t you come in with your compelling last message for the audience.
Dani: I hope that everybody thought that we were polite on the podcast and I just want to remind people that we will always open the doors for people no matter where we are. The other lasting item I want to have people remember is Delilah mentioned, we punch above our weight in Canada in terms of equity capital markets around the world. There was $207 billion raised the last five years in Canada. 68 billion of that was in the innovation economy.
We’re really seeing that there is a huge appetite to invest more dollars into the innovation economy in Canada and globally. And people will always invest in really good companies no matter if it’s a bad or a good market overall. Entrepreneurs just need to understand the different options as Delilah mentioned, of how they could raise that next round of capital.
This is a lot different market than it was two years ago, but there’s still funding available. There’s still money flowing into the ecosystem overall. We like to remind people, be positive overall. I know it can be tough now versus where we used to be, but there are still great stories of great companies being built every single day being funded and making really long lasting generational impacts.
We like people to focus on that. There are layoffs happening in the world and that’s very tough from our personal perspective, but there are also a lot of people being hired into new roles and new positions and let’s highlight the good versus the bad sometimes and talk about the great stories, the revolutionary technologies being developed by some of our agricultural technology companies to make food more sustainable, easier to grow year round and in places where you didn’t think you could grow it. So let’s highlight the good sometimes, not necessarily the bad, and let’s celebrate success in a tough market.
Julia: It’s very interesting listening to you both talk about pathways of capital and of course came out in the discussion earlier, this road to dual listing, particularly thinking about the US markets. I’m really curious, is it just for the US markets or do you see a future where you could be dual listing on TSX and also other markets such as the London Stock Exchange or any other market?
Dani: Absolutely. We see that we have about 300 dual listed issuers, many listed on LSE or aim who utilise TSX or TSX Venture as a pathway to access North American capital overall. It works very well for companies listed on other exchanges throughout the world to see Canada as that gateway to North American capital to US investors and to being able to trade on the same time zone as New York overall and really just avail yourself to more investors being able to look and invest in your company overall.
Julia: That was one of the reasons why I was really keen to do this episode. I opened the episode talking about some of the negative sentiments that’s going around investment is actually having worked with many people around the world. There are so many positive stories coming through and that’s why I was so keen to have you both on the show because as you say, “Not only your realism, your advice, your council, your practical advice, particularly for entrepreneurs understanding their capital pathways, the involvement of the retail and the institutional investment world, the opportunity to dual list and the pathways to growth to become the next unicorn, as you described in some of these extraordinary emerging opportunities that are representing themselves. It’s been phenomenal to have you both on the show. Delilah Panio thank you so much for being with us.
Delilah: Thank you, Julia.
Julia: I love the interplay between the two of you with very different perspectives around obviously a common interest in innovation. Dani Lipkin, thank you for being with us.
Delilah: Thanks, Julia. It’s great to be on.
Julia: And to all our listeners, thank you for listening. Of course, you can find StreetsTalksTo at streetsconsulting.com/StreetsTalksTo. On social media using the #StreetsTalksTo. You’ve been listening to StreetsTalksTo TMX Group, and we’ve been talking about the TSX and the TSX Venture Exchange. And most importantly, this is how you can find them, tsx.com. Thank you as always for listening and until next time, goodbye.
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