The big day for Square’s IPO is here. The company priced the offering of 27,000,000 shares of its Class A common stock at a public offering price of $9.00 per share.
This is significantly less than previously announced plans to price the IPO at $11 to $13.
25,650,000 of the shares are being offered by Square, while 1,350,000 are being offered by the Start Small Foundation, chich is a charitable fund created by Square CEO and founder Jack Dorsey. Square describes it as a “donor-advised fund held and held and administered by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the selling stockholder.”
We just priced our IPO. Here are the details: https://t.co/04VzwadLcX pic.twitter.com/UASfUMGpg5
— Square (@Square) November 19, 2015
Shares begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday under the symbol “SQ,” and the offering is expected to close on November 24.
The company granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 4,050,000 shares of Class A common stock. There are 355 million diluted shares outstanding using the treasury stock method, it says.
CNNMoney digital correspondent Paul R. La Monica says, “There’s no sugarcoating this. Square failed to excite the managers of big mutual funds and hedge funds, the so-called smart money on Wall Street. And that could be a bad sign for other unicorn startups looking to one day go public — billion dollar startups like Airbnb, Dropbox, Pinterest, Snapchat and Uber.”
Starting my day with a haircut at Geno's! https://t.co/SisQ7i3Xt0 pic.twitter.com/RWt3DZipfo
— Jack (@jack) November 19, 2015
Image via Jack Dorsey (Twitter)