By Paul R. La Monica

The IPO window hasn't been completely nailed shut during the government shutdown, but the number of initial public offerings that have made it to Wall Street since late September has slowed considerably, and most have been quite small. That's about to change.

Navan, a corporate travel and expense-management company that described itself as the " Amazon for travel" in its roadshow for investors, is set to debut on the Nasdaq Thursday with the ticker symbol NAVN.

Navan raised $923.1 million through the sale of 36.9 million shares at a price of $25, the midpoint of its proposed range. That would make Navan the largest IPO since buy now, pay later fintech Klarna Group sold nearly $1.4 billion of stock in its early September debut.

"Navan's IPO provided just a glimmer of joy for the equity capital markets in the midst of government shutdown gloom," said Samuel Kerr, global head of equity capital markets at Mergermarket, in an email to Barron's.

"Navan's IPO has lifted what otherwise would have been an extremely poor October," Kerr added, noting that volume for IPOs in October, including Navan's, is only $4.4 billion compared to the $13 billion's worth of new offerings in September.

"The figures show the stranglehold caused by the government shutdown on the IPO market, which is unlikely to return to its September glories until an end to the deadlock," Kerr said.

At the $25 price, Navan is valued at around $6.2 billion. That's a discount to the $9.2 billion that the company was valued at when it last raised a round of private financing in October 2022. Navan was then known as TripActions; it changed its name in February 2023.

Whether Navan can climb back to its previous peak valuation remains to be seen. The stock was indicated to open around $25.50, according to Nasdaq as of late morning. That would be just a 2% increase from the IPO price.

After slumping in the spring, when President Donald Trump's Liberation Day spurred broader market worries about tariffs and the global economy, the IPO market made a big comeback. Several tech IPOs skyrocketed in their first few days of trading in the summer.

Stablecoin company Circle Internet Group, design-software firm Figma, and blockchain lending platform Figure have soared from their offering prices. CoreWeave, a cloud computing and artificial-intelligence firm backed by Nvidia, has skyrocketed in the past few months after a tepid debut in the spring due to poor timing. It went public in late March, near the height of tariff fears.

But IPO investors are becoming a bit more discerning. Not all new stocks are taking off. Klarna is now trading below its IPO price. Ticket reseller StubHub Holdings and crypto firm Gemini Space Station, which is run by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss of early Facebook fame, have also fallen from their offering prices.

With that in mind, Navan could face some headwinds. Even though the company has an impressive group of backers, including leading venture-capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners, the company's fundamentals are mixed.

Although revenue rose 33% in its last fiscal year, to $537 million, and were up another 30% in the first six months of this year, Navan is still not profitable. The company posted a net loss last year of $181 million. While that was smaller than the prior year's, losses increased in the first six months of 2025, to $100 million.

Whether investors are willing to bet on unprofitable IPOs like Navan could be a signal of just how strong market appetite might be for other privately held companies once the government shutdown finally ends and the IPO window reopens.

Write to Paul R. La Monica at paul.lamonica@barrons.com

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October 30, 2025 11:22 ET (15:22 GMT)

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