There were 1,293 initial public offerings around the world last year - worth a combined $171.8 billion - according to the latest EY Global IPO Trends report.
That represents a 39% increase in values year-on-year - that is despite volumes being largely on a par with the numbers seen in 2024.
IPO volumes has been relatively subdued in recent years, with almost half the number of IPOs recorded last year when compared to 2021.
"It's been a bit subdued since then," Fergal McAleavey, EY Ireland's corporate finance partner, said.
"I think there's been a lot of upheaval politically, [impacting] market sentiment... I think that started to stabilise last year," he said.
"The values that have been raised in the market has increased quite a lot so that gives good confidence that there's bigger companies coming to the market raising more capital," he added.
There is also anticipation that some of the rapidly growing - but currently private - AI companies could start to come to market - sparking a sharp rise in activity.
OpenAI is reportedly eyeing a $1 trillion IPO this year, and if that is a success, others could follow suit.
"I think there's been a lot of kind of private equity backed large firms for many years at this stage," he said.
"They've gone through a couple of cycles of various investors of private equity and we're now starting to see hopefully that these companies need an exit, they need to return money to their shareholders, their investors," he said.
"So we'd hope to begin to see if we've got one or two good IPOs in the first quarter, you could see quite a number of large private companies come to the market, particularly in the US," he added.
Mr McAleavey said that the hope would be that a few flotation successes would give other firms the encouragement to launch IPOs of their own.
Most of that activity is likely to be US and Asia-based, though.
The EY data shows that the bulk of the IPO activity in 2025 was in the US, Hong Kong and India - with China and Japan also accounting for a large number of deals.
However European deals are grouped within the "other" category, showing how low the level of activity is here.
"There's probably a lot of older, industrial-type companies in Europe, a lot of them kind of bigger owned, family owned businesses," he said. "Where I think you probably see it in the US it's been a lot of technology companies, particularly in India as well, where that has driven the volume there.
"I think Europe is a little bit behind, definitely, but I think it's driven by the technology, particularly out of the US."
For the Irish Stock Exchange, meanwhile, the focus is on trying to hold onto the companies that are already there.
Last year Dalata was the latest firm to leave Euronext Dublin, following the likes of CRH, Paddy Power owner Flutter Entertainment and Smurfit Kappa (now Smurfit Westrock).
And while PTSB may join that list of departees in the near future, Mr McAleavey said there have been efforts to ensure the stock exchange does not get too much smaller.
"They've launched a new programme, the Access Market, where we saw one company list pre-Christmas, Seenas, a software company," he said. "So I think that is giving companies an alternative channel to private equity or to debt that you can raise, even if you're not a large cap.
"In the US you take a view that you probably need to be north of a $1 billion valuation before you can take a US listing, whereas this is designed specifically for smaller companies who need capital to grow and scale," he added.
