Can you buy Canva shares on the ASX? Good question.
Canva is an Australian 'unicorn' that has drawn quite a lot of attention over the past few years. It even managed to achieve a whopping US$40 billion ($55 billion) valuation last year, which, as we covered at the time, made it more valuable than Coles Group Ltd (ASX: COL), Woolworths Group Ltd (ASX: WOW), and even Telstra Corporation Ltd (ASX: TLS).
That's pretty impressive for a company that was only founded in 2013. Such breakneck growth might elicit some envy and fear of missing out for many ASX investors, especially those with a penchant for fast-growing ASX tech shares.
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Is Canva an ASX share?
So can you buy Canva share on the ASX then? Well, unfortunately, the answer is no.
Canva is not listed on the ASX, meaning ordinary investors like you or me are locked out of Canva. Unlike that other posterchild of hard-to-get ASX tech – Atlassian plc (NASDAQ: TEAM) – we can't even hop over the Pacific and buy Canva shares on the US markets. Canva remains a completely private company, unavailable for investment by anyone who isn't a large, institutional venture capital investor.
That might not be such a bad thing at the present time though. According to reporting in the Australian Financial Review (AFR) last week, Canva has not escaped the savage selloff we have seen across many tech shares of late. Its US$40 billion valuation has certainly been re-appraised.
According to the report, many of Canva's institutional investors have slashed their valuations of the company. Some are now seeing Canva as worth between US$32 and US$36 billion. One investor has reportedly slashed its valuation for Canva down to US$16.6 billion. That latter valuation translates into a fall of almost 60% from September last year.
So perhaps ASX investors should be grateful they haven't been able to buy Canva shares yet.
But whatever your feelings, it's certainly not likely that Canva shares will be on the ASX any time soon, given the state of the current markets. But who knows what the future might bring?
