Reddit may finally be moving forward with its IPO after laying the groundwork for nearly two years.
Reddit hired its first CFO in early 2021 in what many saw as one of the first major steps toward an IPO. At the end of 2021, the company filed paperwork with the SEC to go public, but little forward movement has happened since then, thanks to the economic downturn and other factors.
According to The Information, however, it appears the social media company is once again moving forward. The outlet’s sources say the company plans to move forward later this year, likely in the second half.
Interestingly, unlike other tech firms — ServiceTitan, StockX, and Cohesity — that have allowed their IPO paperwork to lapse, thereby taking the option off the table in the short term, Reddit has been maintaining its filing with the SEC. This would support The Information’s sources, essentially keeping Reddit in a ‘holding pattern’ until the market improves.
Stripe’s IPO may be on the horizon, with the company telling employees it will decide within the next year whether to go public.
Stripe was riding high during the pandemic, one of many tech companies that benefited from the switch to remote work and e-commerce. As spending slowed and interest rates crept up post-pandemic, Stripe was forced to delay any plans to go public.
According to The Information, via CNBC, the company’s founders, John and Patrick Collison, have told employees they will make a decision within the next year. The goal is to either either go public, or give employees the chance to sell their shares via secondary offering.
Intel has filed paperwork to spin off Mobileye, its autonomous driving unit, roughly five years after it acquired it.
Mobileye is a leading provider of autonomous vehicle technology, including the camera systems some models rely. Since being acquired by Intel, the company has benefited from Intel’s investment and technical expertise, significantly expanding its reach. According to The Wall Street Journal, via TheStreet, Mobileye’s vehicle pipeline has risen from 37 million vehicles in 2021 to 50 million in 2022. The company also increased its revenue 40% from 2020 to 2021, coming in at $1.4 billion.
Intel clearly wants to maximize the return on its investment, filing confidentially for a Mobileye IPO. The valuation could come in north of $50 billion, making it the largest IPO of the year so far. Intel says it will retain majority ownership.
Robinhood is aiming for a $35 billion valuation as the company prepares to go public next week.
Robinhood helped democratize stock trading, making it relatively easy for anyone with a smartphone to get involved. The company has built on that success by working to democratize IPO offerings too, allowing the average investor to get in on what used to be reserved for a select few.
The company is preparing to go public, and will price some 55 million stocks between $38 to $42 per share, according to SFGATE. If the shares sell at the high end of the range, it would raise $2.3 billion.
Robinhood also plans to offer its customers an estimated $770 million worth of stock, at $40 a share, via its own platform.
If Robinhood reaches its target valuation, it would prove the ultimate validation for a company that has upended modern-day investing.
Impossible Foods is preparing to go public, amid growing demand for plant-based meat alternatives.
Impossible Foods is one of the premier makers of plant-based meat, and has struck deals with major restaurant chains and grocery stores. Most notably, Burger King has the Impossible Whopper, using the company’s product.
According to Reuters, sources have said Impossible Foods is preparing to go public, with a valuation of $10 billion. This is significantly more than the $4 billion the company was valued at in 2020, indicating the increased demand.
The company is exploring an initial public offering (IPO), as well as a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Merging with a SPAC is popular way for a company to go public without as much regulatory scrutiny. It also provides a greater degree of certainty over the valuation process.
Impossible Foods did not return Reuters request for comment.
Reddit has hired Andrew (Drew) Vollero as its first CFO as the company prepares to go public.
Reddit has been steadily working towards an IPO, recently becoming more transparent about its user base. In December, the company reported it had 52 million daily users in October. Previously, the company had only reported its monthly user base.
The company is now taking the next step, hiring Vollero to help it prepare to go public. Vollero comes from Allied Universal, the largest US security and facility services firm. Prior to his work at Allied Universal, Vollero was Snap’s first CFO during its IPO.
“Drew is an industry thought leader, who brings a track record of building a global finance organization for high growth companies,” said Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO of Reddit. “He will be a tremendous addition to our Executive Team, as Reddit continues accelerating our business and user growth.”
Reddit is much smaller than its social media rivals, but its growth rate far exceeds them. This makes it an attractive option for advertisers, and could set it up for a public offering sooner rather than later.
As Coinbase prepares to go public, it is warning of the risk Bitcoin’s founder(s) pose to the cryptocurrency market in general, and Coinbase in particular.
Coinbase has emerged as one of the most popular ways of trading cryptocurrencies. The company’s success has positioned it for a widely anticipated IPO, but the company is warning of risk factors it faces, unique to its industry, in an SEC filing.
The majority of Coinbase’s net revenue is derived from Bitcoin and Ethereum trading. As a result, should the demand for those cryptocurrencies decline, without another rising to replace them, Coinbase would be in serious trouble.
Another risk factor is “the identification of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, or the transfer of Satoshi’s Bitcoins.”
The real identify of Bitcoin’s creator remains unknown, with “Satoshi Nakamoto” the pseudonymous name of the individual or group of individuals responsible. As Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto’s stash of bitcoins is worth an estimated $30 billion. If Nakamoto were to transfer that large a sum, roughly 5% of the 21 million total available bitcoins, it would drive the price down substantially.
Coinbase’s listed risk factors illustrates the challenges companies face as they navigate, adapt and build a business around the emerging cryptocurrency market.
On the heels of news it had joined forced with Microsoft and Adobe to challenge Salesforce, C3.ai has announced its intention to file an IPO.
C3.ai is an enterprise AI firm founded by CRM legend Tom Siebel. In late-October, C3.ai announced it had joined forces with Microsoft and Adobe to challenge Salesforce’s grip on the customer relationship management (CRM) market. The new product, C3 AI CRM, is built on Microsoft Dynamics and integrates with Adobe Experience Cloud, all the while using C3.ai to put AI first.
The company is now filing for an IPO. The stock will trade under the ticker symbol “AI,” and will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The number of shares and price range have yet to be determined. Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and BofA Securities will act as lead book-running managers.
“Assessing the IT landscape at the beginning of the 21st century, it became apparent that a new set of technologies was destined to constitute another step function that would change everything about the information processing world, dramatically accelerating the growth of IT markets,” wrote Siebel in the filing. “This step function of technologies – substantially more impactful than anything we had seen before – included: elastic cloud computing, big data, the internet of things, and AI or predictive analytics. Today, at the confluence of these technology vectors we find the phenomenon of Enterprise AI and Digital Transformation, mandates that are rising to the top of every CEO’s agenda. The global IT market exceeds $2.3 trillion today.”
Siebel was bullish on the company’s target market, as well as his company’s prospects within it.
“We serve a large and rapidly growing market, estimated to be $174 billion in 2020, growing to $271 billion in 2024,” he continued. “Our goal is to establish a global market-leading position in this market as we did at Oracle and at Siebel Systems. The difference being that this market is an order of magnitude larger than either of those opportunities.”
Just twenty short months after SAP announced their intention of acquiringQualtrics for $8 billion just prior to their IPO SAP is taking Qualtrics public.
“The Qualtrics IPO is actually a win-win situation for both SAP and Qualtrics,” says SAP CEO Christian Klein. “When we are talking about Qualtrics let me first outline that Qualtrics was for sure one of the best acquisitions SAP ever did. They performed in the last 9 months above and beyond all the expectations we have set at the point of the acquisition. Now, three months back when I became the sole CEO of SAP Ryan Smith and I discussed a few options about how to move Qualtrics to the next level.”
“SAP’s acquisition of Qualtrics has been a great success and has outperformed our expectations with 2019 cloud growth in excess of 40 percent, demonstrating very strong performance in the current setup,” Klein stated. “As Ryan Smith, Zig Serafin, and I worked together, we decided that an IPO would provide the greatest opportunity for Qualtrics to grow the Experience Management category, serve its customers, explore its own acquisition strategy and continue building the best talent. SAP will remain Qualtrics’ largest and most important go-to-market and research and development (R&D) partner while giving Qualtrics greater independence to broaden its base by partnering and building out the entire experience management ecosystem.”
“When we launched the Experience Management category, our goal was always to help as many organizations as possible leverage the XM Platform as a system of action,” Qualtrics Founder Ryan Smith said. “SAP is an incredible partner with unprecedented global reach, and we couldn’t be more excited about continuing the partnership. This will allow us to continue building out the XM ecosystem across a broad array of partners.”
SAP agreed to acquire Qualtrics just four days before Qualtrics was to go public in 2018, recognizing the potential of bringing together experience and operational data (X+O) to help organizations take action. SAP currently owns 100 percent of Qualtrics shares. SAP will retain majority ownership of Qualtrics and has no intention of spinning off or otherwise divesting its majority ownership interest. Ryan Smith intends to be Qualtrics’ largest individual shareholder.
Christian Klein, CEO of SAP, discusses the reasons for their IPO and says that Qualtrics has been the best acquisition that SAP ever did:
Qualtrics IPO Is A Win-Win For SAP and Qualtrics
When we are talking about Qualtrics let me first outline that Qualtrics was for sure one of the best acquisitions SAP ever did. They performed in the last 9 months above and beyond all the expectations we have set at the point of the acquisition. Now, three months back when I became the sole CEO of SAP Ryan Smith and I discussed a few options about how to move Qualtrics to the next level. The partial IPO, we are both fully convinced, is actually a win-win situation for both SAP and Qualtrics.
First, it will allow Qualtrics to focus on the non-SAP customer base in a high closed market. Second, despite the IPO, of course, SAP will remain fully committed to Experience Management (XM) and we will develop further use cases for our customers. We will also continue with the joint go-to-market. SAP is fully committed and will be in the long run highly committed to to Qualtrics and also will remain a majority shareholder of Qualtrics going forward.
IPO Allows Qualtrics To Go After non-SAP Customers
We kicked off already in the last 19 months, great use cases for our customers. We launched Human Experience Management (HXM) which helped both to accelerate the sales of Qualtrics but also our core application success factors. We did the same for commerce. In our product strategy, it actually plans to really expand experience management across our solution portfolio.
Our employees are very excited about that because they see the benefits for our customers and this is something that won’t change with the IPO. This will allow Qualtrics more autonomy to also go after the market with non-SAP customers as this is a high quote segment.
Qualtrics IPO Is A Win-Win, Says SAP CEO Christian Klein
“Last year we sent about 50,000 pet portraits to our customers,” says Chew CEO Sumit Singh. “We’re an experience-driven company. This is not a cost. This is an engagement mechanism. We’ve partnered with about a thousand local artists across the country. We think of this as an experience building. We have 90 percent re-ups (of our subscriptions). Our customers love engaging with us.”
Sumit Singh, CEO of Chewy, discusses their IPO (launched today) and how customer engagement has driven their phenomenal growth in an interview on CNBC:
We Are An Experience-Driven Company
Last year we sent about 50,000 pet portraits to our customers. We’re an experience-driven company. This is not a cost. This is an engagement mechanism. We’ve partnered with about a thousand local artists across the country. They show up to your doorstep unannounced. It’s a total surprise. You can’t buy them. When they do (the paintings) they create memories. People talk about them. They drive dinner table conversations. They show up on social media. It’s just an emotive category.
We think of this as an experience building. We have this because we want it, not because we need it in some way. Once we get out there and once this shows up on your doorstep the engagement that it creates generates the loyalty, the repeat purchase rate. In fact, our cohorts just keep growing from $330 to $500, $600, and $700 as they go from year five, six, and into year seven. This is what does it. Pets is the only category where a consumer refers to themselves as a pet parent. The only other category where consumers do that is kids.
“Jackson loves his Chewy portrait!” notes Chewy customer Eri Anne
Our Customers Love Engaging With Us
Pet ownership is underrepresented in the growth of e-commerce. First of all today in the United States we’re only about 14 percent penetrated from an online point of view. Chewy, if you look at it, is a $70 billion dollar industry. We’re penetrated in about roughly 10 percent of the households. We have 11 million customers. We’re growing fast and we’re engaging them hard.
They stay with us. It’s the two flywheels, the engagement, and the acquisition. It just spins really well. Our investors love that. Our customers love that. We like it. We have 90 percent re-ups (of our subscriptions). Two-thirds of our revenue comes from Autoship and our subscription program. Our customers love engaging with us.
We Have An Incredible Amount of Data
Our shipping (cost) is built into our gross margins. What you’ve seen is as we’ve gotten big fast, we’ve also gotten fit fast. Our gross margin has expanded over 500 basis points over the last three years. We have a dense network. We have the predictability of Autoship. We can plan supply plan tighter and baseload build a lot tighter and get it to our customers fast and in a reliable manner. That’s how we make it work.
We have a ton of data. When you contact us you’re giving us (information). Pet profiles is an amazing way for us to engage with you. Customers are leaning in. We talked to you via customer service. At this point, we have 11 million customers but we manage over 27 million relationships between pets and pet parents. That is an incredible amount of data and facts to have on base.
Pets.com Was 20 Years Ago
The company (Pets.com) was 20 years ago. Look at the way the e-commerce has built out, the inputs are changing. Look at our stickiness. Look at the number of customers that we’re attracting. The fact that we’re servicing greater than 95 percent of US households in less than two days and the fact that customers keep coming back to us. Also, the necessity and desire to continue to engage and seek information via the high-touch high-class customer service that we provide. We just closed the loop better than anybody else out there.
We Are An Experience-Driven Company, Says Chewy CEO Sumit Singh
“I don’t know about social commerce overall but I definitely know that our users often want to buy the things they find on Pinterest,” said Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann while discussing going public on the NYSE. “A lot of people say they discovered a product or service while browsing Pinterest,” says Silbermann. “We just want to make it easier for them to go from that inspiration all the way to reality, which in this case would be a purchase.”
Pinterest was initially priced at $19 per share, which gave it a value of $10 billion on Wednesday morning. The company closed Friday up 28% at $24.40, which vaulted Pinterest to a value of just under $13 billion.
Pinterest Goes Public on the NYSE!
Ben Silbermann, co-founder and CEO of Pinterest, discusses on Bloomberg how Pinterest is unique both in how consumers use the product and how advertisements have simply become part of the experience:
The Ads On Pinterest Can Actually Be Really Additive
We really talked with investors about how regular people use the product every day. People use it to get inspiration for a whole range of things, everything from the food they cook to the clothes they wear to their homes. It’s really more about your personal inspiration and it’s less about your friends. It’s not really about following celebrities in the news. We wanted to make sure that everyone understood that because that’s how our users see the product every day.
The thing that makes it really special is that the reason people are on Pinterest is to get inspiration and do things with their life. It’s really lined up with what advertisers want which is to inspire new customers and get them to buy products and services they really love. What that means is that the ads on Pinterest can actually be really additive as long as we do a good job of making sure they’re highly relevant. I think that’s just really different from a lot of media companies where ads are candidly a little bit of a tax. That difference in alignment I think is the biggest difference between us and some other media properties.
My Eye Is On What’s Going to Make Pinterest Great 10 Years From Now
I still think there’s a real opportunity to grow over time and increase engagement. A lot of people might use Pinterest for one thing or two things but they don’t know the wide range of different ways people all over the world use the product. I also got to say that we’re super proud that we’re growing globally. If it (IPO) was just a few years ago the story would have been primarily a US-based service. It’s just really fulfilling for the company to know that the product works all over the world.
We’re in the very first chapter of that story (selling internationally) so we’re just hiring our first local sales teams in places like Canada, Western Europe, Germany, and France. We’re just at the beginning of the journey but I think there’s going to be a real opportunity to show the same great results we’ve seen in the United States to advertisers all over the world. We’re going to continue to invest for the long term. We’ve shown really good margin improvement over the last few years but my eye is always on what’s going to make Pinterest great three years, five years, and even ten years from now. That’s going to be how we continue to run the business and we’re really excited to see it keep growing.
We Want To Make It Easier For People To Go From Inspiration To Purchase
We’re always working to make sure people can bridge that gap between seeing something inspiring and doing it. One area that we’re investing in is making sure that we match inspirational images with more and more products that are at a price point that matters for people and for retailers they really trust. We just enabled people who are retailers to upload all of their catalogs into Pinterest. We’re investing a lot into computer vision technology to match those products with images and we’re not just doing it with shopping, we’re also doing it with all the different use cases. If you have a recipe on Pinterest now you’ll see the ingredients and people can write reviews. If you have a DIY project you can see other people’s experiences, whether it was easy or whether it was a little harder than they expected.
I don’t know about social commerce overall but I definitely know that our users often want to buy the things they find on Pinterest. A lot of people say they discovered a product or service while browsing Pinterest. We just want to make it easier for them to go from that inspiration all the way to reality, which in this case would be a purchase.
Making It Easier For People To Go From Inspiration To Purchase – Pinterest CEO
Slack has not had a good week. On the heels of a CNBC report that Microsoft Teams is maintaining its lead over the messaging service, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is reporting that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has opened an investigation into Slack, among others.
According to the WSJ, “the SEC is probing IPOs over the past several years of other so-called unicorns, companies known for achieving high valuations while private.”
The SEC’s staff evidently sent letters to Citadel Securities LLC to inquire about “how it opened Slack’s stock for trading on June 20 in the workplace-messaging app’s so-called direct listing.”
As the WSJ points out, there is no indication what type of wrongdoing the SEC is looking for, or who may be the specific target of the investigation. Nonetheless, an SEC investigation is the last thing any company wants.
“We just launched a new consumer site that lets our agents collaborate with their clients,” says Compass founder and CEO Robert Reffkin. “It has features such as AI-driven recommendations exactly for the buyer. Based on everything that they’re searching it makes recommendations. It has another feature called Collections, which is a visual workplace. It allows the agent and their client to collaborate, discuss, and monitor the market in real-time.”
Robert Reffkin, CEO of Compass, discusses their new AI-driven recommendations website and says that an “IPO is likely in their future” in an interview on CNBC:
Compass Launches Consumer Site With AI-Driven Recommendations
We’re building a platform to power all real estate decisions for advisors, sellers, and buyers. Agents come to grow their business, sellers come to sell their home for more money and less time, and buyers come to find the best listings. We just launched a new consumer site that lets our agents collaborate with their clients. It has features such as AI-driven recommendations exactly for the buyer. Based on everything that they’re searching it makes recommendations. It has another feature called Collections, which is a visual workplace. It allows the agent and their client to collaborate, discuss, and monitor the market in real-time.
There are technology companies that focus on agents but not the consumer and there are technology companies that focus on the consumer but not the agent. We’re unique in that we’re focusing on both and really allowing them to collaborate together. What makes us a technology company is we have scale effects, we have network effects, flywheel effects, we have defensible IP technology and are asset-light. Our core flywheel is really an inventory based flywheel where we hire agents that bring inventory. With our new site, we create a great buyer experience which brings more traffic for agents. Then we build tools for our sellers to sell their homes for more money and in less time which allows them to bring even more inventory.
An IPO Is Likely In Our Future
An IPO is likely in our future. But I don’t go to sleep at night thinking about an IPO. I go to sleep and I think about how we can help our agents grow their business and better serve their clients. I look at all the companies that go public (including WeWork) to take lessons from them on what you can or cannot do. Real estate is a very large segment of our global economy. I think it’s the largest. However, (unlike WeWork) we’re not a landlord, we’re a very different type of business.
There’s excess inventory (in the New York market) on one hand but with low-interest rates, there has never been a low-interest-rate environment that hasn’t been good for real estate. So I think it’s a good time to be a buyer. Whether it’s the mansion tax, the transfer tax, or SALT, I think the real challenge there is the perception of taxes. When there’s a perception that taxes are going to increase that’s not good for real estate. Markets where there are a lot of software companies doing great such as Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, Boulder, and Nashville (are hot for real estate) but in any market, there are buying opportunities. I think just have to find the right agent to help you identify those.
Compass Launches Consumer Site With AI-Driven Recommendations, Says CEO Robert Reffkin
“Not only do we expect to hit cashflow break-even, but we expect this business to be very profitable at maturity,” says Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. “I think that going forward our spending declines as a percent of revenue. So when you’re growing trips 35 percent year on year your spending is going to increase. But we’re going to get leverage on the marketing line and we’re definitely going to get fixed cost leverage going forward.”
Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, discusses the company’s latest quarterly results and predicts that Uber will ultimately be very profitable in an interview on CNBC:
Uber Is Much More Than a Rideshare Company Now
The IPO for us is a once in a lifetime moment. It was a really important moment for the company. Some of what we did like the driver appreciation award, almost $300 million that we put in the hands of over a million drivers globally were really important for us to do. It created a messy P&L from an accounting standpoint. I think it is hiding underlying trends that are actually very healthy for the company. If you look at trends for the company which is going to matter long-term, you have got gross bookings over $16 billion growing 37 percent on a year on year basis. You’ve got trip volume, and trips are units, growing 35 percent year on year. You’ve got audience, monthly active platform customers, now over 100 million, growing 30 percent. The actual revenue growth excluding the driver appreciation award was up 26 percent.
What I did tell our investors is to expect that to accelerate into the back half of the year. The back half of the year you are going to see if trends stay the same, revenue growth in excess of 30 percent. When you look at profitability, we beat our own internal targets and we beat Street targets as well. We came in at a loss of $656 million. It’s still a big loss but the losses are improving and the take rates are improving. If you back out some of those one-time expenses, we went from a loss of $800 million to a loss of $656 million. We got much more efficient on the marketing front. We actually took marketing as a percentage down while we were still growing the top line over 30 percent as well. This is much more than a rideshare company now, it’s a transportation company.
We Expect This Business To Be Very Profitable At Maturity
We are in a situation as far as the network effect of the company where we don’t need to increase the marketing and incentives. We can go in with loyalty plans both for riders and drivers that are going to add to leverage and ultimately profitability of the company. This is a marketplace company that has over 20 percent revenue margins and revenue margins are increasing year on year. Not only do we expect to hit cashflow break-even, but we expect this business to be very profitable at maturity.
I think that going forward our spending declines as a percent of revenue. So when you’re growing trips 35 percent year on year your spending is going to increase. But we’re going to get leverage on the marketing line and we’re definitely going to get fixed cost leverage going forward. I think that this quarter proved that out and we have to keep hitting our marks in the next couple of quarters. It’s a super-competitive marketplace but we are confident. We like what we saw operationally this quarter.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi: We Expect This Business To Be Very Profitable at Maturity
There’s a big business to be built even just on the medical side of legal marijuana says legendary technology investor Geoff Lewis. Lewis was an early investor in Tilray which recently had a hugely successful IPO of which he was pleasantly surprised.
Lewis thinks the worldwide trend is toward recreational legalization of marijuana and that bodes well for Tilray. “I think quite honestly the US is behind other countries on that score,” says Lewis. “So TBD here, but around the world, the trend is very much toward recreational legalization.”
Geoff Lewis, the founder of Bedrock Capital and an early tech investor in many companies including Tilray, the global leader in legal marijuana, Lewis recently discussed the recent Tilray IPO and the future of legal pot around the world on CNBC:
I Didn’t Think the Tilray Founders Actually Used the Product
One of the reasons I invested in Tilray, via Privateer Holdings, the creators of Tilray back in 2014, was that I didn’t think the founders actually used the product. I spent a lot of time trying to diligence whether I thought the team was actually using it and they weren’t.
The reason I cared is not that I have anything societally against it, but it was illegal at the time. The company was based at the time in Washington State where it was not legal.
At this point, I do think the trend has really dramatically shifted from back when we invested in Tilray in 2014 and it’s now obviously a publicly traded company. It’s a big win and we’re really lucky to have been able to back those founders early on. But there were only a few countries in the world where there was a medically legal framework and now there are over 30 countries.
There’s Big Business to be Built on Just the Medical Side
We didn’t know the IPO was going to be as successful as it was, that was a pleasant surprise. I would say that we did believe that regulation ultimately follows what society wants. We felt back in 2014 when we made the investment that most people in most countries believe it should at least be medically legal and the regulations were very expected.
There’s big business to be built just on the medical side. I do strongly believe the trend is toward recreational legalization. This is certainly true in many of the Western European countries and South America. I think quite honestly the US is behind other countries on that score. So TBD here, but around the world, the trend is very much toward recreational legalization.
Investors, especially those who specialize in picking tech stocks, will now have one additional company to consider as an investment option. A decade after its founding, Dropbox is now a publicly traded company starting Friday, March 23, 2018.
The San Francisco-based firm successfully hosted its IPO on Thursday where investors boughtDropbox share at $21. Popular for its cloud-based files storage and syncing service, the company was able to raise a whopping $750 million from the event.
The IPO price of $21 per share is already wayabove the $16 to $18 price range previously proposed by the company earlier this month. The final price was even higher than the latest estimate when Dropbox raised it to between $18 and $20 in its regulatory document filed on Wednesday.
At its current share price, Dropbox is now a publicly traded behemoth with amarket capitalization of $9.1 billion. However, this amount still falls short compared to the $10 billion valuation it received during its last round of private funding in 2014.
Of course, many are fearful that the tech company’s valuation trend will go downhill after its IPO, which seem to hound some tech listings. For instance, investors had to wait for almost a year before Snapchat’s shares rebounded and startedtrading above its June 2017 IPO price of $17 per share. This is a turn off for short-term investors who do not wish to hold on to a share for too long.
But most investors remain upbeat on Dropbox’s future earning potential. The company is already cash flow positive and performed well last year. Its sales are on the rise, garnering amassive $1.11 billion in revenues for 2017 alone. The figure represents a 30 percent increase compared to 2016’s performance.
If you are one of those investors who specialize in trading shares of technology companies, you might have one more company to play with in the coming months ahead. People privy to the deal are now claiming that the next big tech company to go public will be the file-sharing giant Dropbox.
In fact, San Francisco-based Dropbox has already filed confidentially for a U.S. IPO, according to a Bloomberg report. The publication said that the IPO plan has been confirmed by people who are familiar with the details but declined to reveal the sources’ identities because the filing has not officially been made public at the moment.
According to the unnamed sources, Dropbox, a company privately valued at $10 billion, is gunning for IPO by the first half of 2018. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. were named as the possible institutions that will lead in the future listing. Meanwhile, other banks will be approached this month for various roles in connection with the IPO.
At the moment, Dropbox, as well as JPMorgan Chase & Co and Goldman Sachs declined to comment on the issue.
If Dropbox’s IPO pushes through, the company will be under close watch by investors. Naturally, the investment community will want to see how the company’s share price will fare in the post-IPO period. The upcoming IPO follows SnapChat’s disappointing performance since its IPO last March 2017. Snap’s share price had fallen 15 percent from its IPO value.
But there are indications that Dropbox won’t be suffering the same sad fate as Snapchat. Unlike Snap, Dropbox has a positive cash flow and a gargantuan annual sales figure breaching the $1 billion mark. In addition, companies in its line of business seem to be resilient. The company called Box, Dropbox’s competitor that went public back in 2015, has been doing well since then. Box’s share price even managed to climb more than 50 percent since its IPO.
According to a leaked presentation to potential investors in China, Uber plans to go public in the next 18-24 months – putting the IPO sometime near the end of 2016 to the middle of 2017.
Reuters reports on the documents, which also include plenty of financials.
According to the presentation, Uber is expected to see global bookings of $10.84 billion this year. Considering Uber takes 20% of that, it appears that Uber’s 2015 revenue would be around $2 billion.
Uber projects $26.12 billion in bookings next year.
“Bookings reached $2.91 billion last year and $687.8 million in 2013, according to the presentation, which does not feature expenses or say whether Uber is profitable,” says Reuters.
So, bookings have more than tripled over the past year.
As far as whether or not Uber is profitable, it’s unlikely at this point. A recent report from Bloomberg revealed $470 million in losses of the company. Uber is currently spending a lot of money to expand.
Last month, Uber reportedly raised another $1 billion in funding, valuing the company at over $50 billion.
Uber says it “doesn’t comment on rumor and speculation.”
Has payments company Square secretly filed to go public?
That’s the word from Bloomberg, which quotes the ubiquitous sources familiar with the matter.
Square was said to be gearing up for this for the past few months, with reports last month indicating the move was imminent. In reality, talks about a Square IPO have been floating around for years.
Square’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, was recently made interim CEO of Twitter when its former head Dick Costolo stepped down. Don’t expect Dorsey to share duties, however. Twitter’s board has made it abundantly clear that the permanent CEO will not be someone who shares their time.
Square, which processed over $30 billion in payments last year, has been branching out as of late. Besides its flagship mobile payments service and its P2P transfer service, Square Cash, the company recently launched its own payroll service.
Fitness tracking wearables company Fitbit has decided to go public
According to Fortune, Fitbit will trade on the NYSE under the symbol FIT. The company says it plans to raise $100 million, but that number is likely to change.
Fitbit’s regulatory filing revealed some interesting things about the company – including some impressive numbers in terms of revenues and profit.
According to the filing, Fitbit hauled in over $745 million in revenues in 2014, up from $271 million the previous year. The company was profitable for the first time in 2014, generated nearly $132 million in net income. The previous year, that figure was a loss ($51.6 million).
Fitbit also revealed just how many devices it has sold.
In 2011, the company sold 200,000 devices. By 2012, that number was 1.3 million. Last year, Fitbit sold 10.9 million devices.
“Our primary goal is to help our users improve their health and fitness. We believe our platform assists users in changing their daily behavior, such as eating healthier foods or going for a run or walking more to reach a goal or win a challenge. We empower our users to set their own health and fitness goals and track their progress towards these goals. We also offer premium services on a subscription basis that provide personalized insights and virtual coaching through customized fitness plans and interactive video-based exercise experiences on mobile devices and computers. Our premium services feature in-depth data analysis and personalized reports, as well as benchmarking against peers,” said Fitbit.
“By offering a broad range of products spanning styles and affordable price points and cross-platform compatibility, we empower a wide range of individuals with different fitness routines and goals that are difficult for other competitors to address. Moreover, our singular focus on building a connected health and fitness platform, coupled with a leading market share, has led to our brand becoming synonymous with the connected health and fitness category. This singular focus on health and fitness has driven us to dedicate significant resources to developing proprietary sensors, algorithms, and software to ensure that our products, which are specifically oriented towards health and fitness, have accurate measurements, insightful analytics, compact sizes, durability, and long battery lives. We believe this singular focus allows us to compete favorably with companies that have introduced or have announced plans to introduce devices with broad-based functionalities, including health and fitness tracking capabilities, which are not necessarily optimized for health and fitness usage.”
If you’re a married person looking to have an affair, the number one internet destination is AshleyMadison.com. The Toronto-based company is looking to go public, but its hopping across the pond to do so.
Avid Life Media, parent company to Ashley Madison and a handful of other dating websites, is planning to launch an IPO in London. Why?
“Europe is the only region where we have a real chance of doing an IPO,” said Christoph Kraemer, the company’s head of international relations, to Bloomberg. “We’re no longer a niche, but it’s been difficult in North America to find the support to go public.”
“In Europe, we have simply got a more laissez faire attitude towards a business such as ours,” he said.
North America is more prudish about affairs, it appears. At least when it comes to public offerings. Half of Ashley Madison’s 34 million members come from the US.
According to the Huffington Post, Ashley Madison had sales of $115 million last year. It’s looking to raise $200 million.
Here’s founder Noel Biderman discussing the imminent IPO:
