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>>> Instacart is an American company that operates a grocery delivery and pick-up service in the United States and Canada.[5] The company offers its services via a website and mobile app. The service allows customers to order groceries from participating retailers with the shopping being done by a personal shopper.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instacart
History
2010s
Instacart was founded in 2012 by entrepreneur Apoorva Mehta, a former Amazon.com employee.[7][8][9] Apoorva was born in India and moved with his family to Canada in 2000.[10][11] He studied engineering at the University of Waterloo and graduated in 2008.[12] He was a participant in Y Combinator's Summer 2012 batch, which eventually led to the creation of Instacart.[13] In 2013, Mehta was included on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.[14] Apoorva previously worked at BlackBerry, Qualcomm, and then Amazon as a supply chain engineer, where he developed fulfillment systems to move packages from Amazon's warehouses to customers' homes.[15] He left Amazon in 2010 to attempt to start his own business.[16] Before founding Instacart, Apoorva had tried to start at least 20 other services.[14][7] He tried building an ad network for social gaming companies, and developing a social network specifically for lawyers, among other start-ups.[17]
Instacart originally launched in San Francisco.[18][19][20][21] By April 2015, the firm had about 200 employees. It introduced a new policy around June allowing some shoppers to choose to be part-time employees, starting with Chicago and Boston[22][23] and extending its offer to shoppers in Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C. the following month.[24]
In September 2016, the company announced an expansion to its zone on the north side of Chicago.[25] In October 2016, it announced the expansion of coverage areas in Orange County, California,[26] and Minneapolis.[27] In November 2016, the company changed its policy and removed the option to leave a gratuity in exchange for a service fee that would be used to pay workers instead. Backlash against the policy from customers and some shoppers forced the company to reinstate the option only weeks later with modifications that placed the tip under the service fee section on a separate page.[28][29]
In March 2017, Instacart agreed to pay $4.6 million to settle a class action settlement stemming from the alleged misclassification of its personal shoppers as independent contractors. The suit, filed in March 2015, alleged 18 violations, including improper tip pooling and failure to reimburse workers for business expenses.[30][31] The same year, Instacart raised $400 million in funding at a valuation of $3.4 billion.[32][33] In November 2017, the company expanded to Canada by announcing a partnership with Loblaw Companies to begin delivery from select locations in Toronto and Vancouver.[34][35] That same month, some Instacart workers participated in a strike action, alleging wages as low as $1 an hour. Instacart claimed that the strike had no impact on its operations.[36]
In January 2018, the company acquired Toronto-based Unata, a white-label platform for grocers, for $65 million.[37][38][39] In February 2018, Instacart withheld tips given by customers to shoppers, blaming a software bug. In addition, customers were often charged for service fees that were supposed to be waived.[40] In April 2018, Instacart made a few additional changes to its pay service by instituting a mandatory 5% service fee on all orders. It originally offered an optional 10% service fee that went directly to Instacart that could be turned off. It also returned the gratuity option back to the checkout screen and raised the default value from 0% to 5%.[41] By mid-2018, Instacart was available for use in 11 Canadian markets and was planning expansions for five more markets.[42] Later in 2018, the company raised $200 million at a $4.2 billion valuation in a funding round led by Coatue Management, as well as Glade Brook Capital Partners and existing investors.[43] In October 2018, Instacart raised another $600 million at a $7.6 billion valuation in a funding round led by hedge fund D1 Capital Partners.[44] In the fall of 2018, Instacart announced national expansions with retailers, including Walmart Canada stores, Staples Canada, M&M Food Market,[45] Kroger, Aldi, Sam's Club, Publix, and Costco.[46][47] In November 2018, Instacart announced the national expansion of Instacart Pickup, a grocery click-and-collect service, whereby users pick up their pre-packaged orders at the grocery store.[48] In November and December 2018, Instacart again changed its pay system for its personal shoppers; shoppers claimed this pay system resulted in substantially lower pay and boycotted. Instacart customers complained on social media that their orders were being delayed.[49][50][51] At the end of the year, Instacart raised an additional $271 million from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Comcast Ventures, Thrive Capital, Coatue Management, and Valiant Capital, bringing its latest round of fundraising to $871 million at a $7.87 billion valuation.[52]
In February 2019, an online organizing campaign, including shoppers, provided examples of payments as low as $0.80 per delivery. The company announced that it would revise its pay system and give back pay to some workers.[53][54] Under the revised pay system, tips were no longer factored into the minimum base wages, which were newly set at $7–$10 for a full-service shopping order (based on delivery market) and $5 for delivery only.[55][56] In March 2019, Instacart expanded its same-day alcohol delivery service in the U.S.[57] On April 11, 2019, the company expanded its services to offering an on-demand option for its workers, in order to allow workers to work more flexible schedules.[58] Effective May 2019, Whole Foods Market ended its partnership with Instacart.[59][60] By the end of December 2019, Instacart's alcohol delivery service included over 30 new partners in more than 20 states and Washington, D.C., such as Albertsons, Aldi, Sam's Club, BJ's Wholesale Club, Sprouts Farmers Market, The Fresh Market, and Total Wine & More.[61][62]
2020s
In February 2020, Instacart employees in Skokie, Illinois voted to unionize. Instacart said it "will honor" the vote, pending certification of the results. In the lead-up to the election, high-level Instacart managers distributed anti-union literature at a Skokie grocery store where some of the unionizing workers pick up groceries for delivery.[63] At the time, about 12,000 of Instacart's 142,000 workers were employees with the option of unionizing.[64]
From mid-March to mid-April 2020, Instacart hired an additional 300,000 workers to meet the surge in demand for grocery deliveries during the COVID-19 pandemic.[65][66] Data from Apptopia demonstrated a 218% increase in daily downloads as social distancing measures increased.[67] Instacart also introduced new services in response to the pandemic, including a contactless delivery option, safety kits and guidelines for shoppers, and new sick leave policies and pay for those affected by COVID-19.[68][69]
Instacart workers threatened to strike on March 27, 2020 due to a lack of COVID-19 safety measures. A group called the Gig Workers Collective called for a nationwide walk-out to be held on March 30. They had been asking Instacart to provide workers with hazard pay and protective gear, amongst other demands.[70] In early April, Instacart began providing safety kits to workers, with complaints describing a complicated process to order and wait for the kits to arrive.[71] In May, workers reported being denied sick leave despite quarantining under the advice of a doctor. Instacart required that workers either get a positive Covid-19 test or be under a mandatory quarantine by a public health agency or other government agency.[72][73] By June, Instacart changed its sick leave rules in an agreement reached by it and D.C. Attorney General, Karl Racine. Under the agreement, Instacart would provide paid leave to workers who were clinically diagnosed with Covid-19 by a doctor or other medical profession along with those who had a household member contract Covid-19. The agreement also provided access for workers to telemedicine services.[74][75]
In May 2020, Instacart began a partnership with Rite Aid, offering its service across 2,400 locations in 18 states.[76] In August 2020, Instacart entered its first partnership with Walmart in the U.S. to offer same-day delivery services. The partnership is a pilot program beginning in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Tulsa.[77][78] Additional partnerships in June included C&S Wholesale Grocers and Staples.[79][80]
In October 2020, Instacart raised $200 million at a valuation of $17.7 billion in a financing round led by Valiant Capital and D1 Capital Partners.[81]
On January 14, 2021, Instacart announced a vaccine support stipend to provide financial assistance to company shoppers who choose to get the COVID-19 vaccine.[82][83]
On January 21, 2021, the company planned to lay off nearly 2,000 employees, including all of its employees who had voted to unionize. Instacart said that the layoffs were due to stores increasingly using Instacart to have consumers place orders, but have their own employees fulfill the order instead of Instacart's workforce, reducing reliance on Instacart's in-store shoppers.[84][85][86]
As of its most recent funding round, in March 2021, Instacart raised $265 million at a valuation of $39 billion from existing venture capital investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia and D1 Capital Partners, as well as existing institutional investors like Fidelity and T. Rowe Price.[87] In March 2022, Instacart slashed its valuation by almost 40% to $24 billion.[88]
On July 8, 2021, Instacart announced that it had appointed Board Member Fidji Simo as CEO, while Apoorva Mehta transitioned to Executive Chairman of the Board.[89]
On February 22, 2022, Instacart started to team up with Delta to give clients more ways to earn miles when they link their SkyMiles and Instacart accounts, with special earning bonuses for Instacart+ members.[90][91]
On March 3, 2022, the platform celebrates women's history month by expanding advertising initiative with new $1 million to support Women-Owned Brands.[92]
On March 16, 2022, in partnership with TikTok, Hearst Magazine and Tasty, Instacart launched Shoppable Recipes with new product integrations that allow food creators to make their recipes shoppable on Instacart.[93]
On March 23, Instacart introduced the Instacart Platform, a program with services for retailers. The platform launched with features for advertising, home delivery, and inventory counting.[94][95]
In May 2022, Instacart announced that it had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, signalling its intent to go public.[96] Instacart unveiled new partnerships with Canada's top 5 grocers: Metro, Giant Tiger, Galleria Supermarket and more, expanding same-day delivery countrywide.[97]
In June 2022, Instacart+ (formerly Instacart Express) was introduced with new family shopping features, including sharing membership with another family member for free. The membership also allows for shopping-cart collaboration among family members.[98]
In July 2022, Instacart appointed CEO Fidji Simo to succeed Apoorva Mehta as the Board Chair once the company completed its initial public offering.[99] EBT SNAP is now accepted online via the Instacart Platform in 10 additional states- Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming - with launch partners Albertsons Companies and Sprouts Farmers Market.[100]
In September 2022, Instacart announced it would be acquiring Eversight, an AI pricing platform. [101] [102]
Service model
Orders are fulfilled and delivered by a personal shopper, who picks, packs, and delivers the order within the customer's designated time frame—within one hour or up to five days in advance.[103][104] Customers pay with personal debit or credit cards, Google Pay, Apple Pay and EBT cards.[105] The delivery fee is $3.99 for orders of $35 or more and $7.99 under that amount. Regardless of the cost of the order, there is a 5% service fee with a minimum of $2 owed. Instacart offers a membership service called Instacart+, formerly Instacart Express until June 2022, for a monthly fee of about $9.99 or an annual fee of $99. The membership service waives delivery fees on orders over $35, but customers must still pay the service fee for the shopper. Customers are also requested to leave a gratuity.[106] Retailers participating in Instacart's partnership program set the price of individual items on the Instacart marketplace, which are mostly the same prices as in-store.[107] In addition, customers can pick up their pre-made orders from the store through a separate service.[108] For stores that do not participate in Instacart's partnership program, customers can be charged a markup of about 15%-40% per order with individual items ranging from a negative markup to over 50%.[109][110]
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>>> Moolec Science, a Pioneer in Molecular Farming and Food Ingredient Technology, to List on Nasdaq Through
Business Combination with LightJump Acquisition Corp.
https://www.lightjumpcap.com/lightjump-acquisition-corp
https://assets.website-files.com/5f31e8f1c1689c69bfacd91a/62a95642176e1519ace8eb60_Moolec_LightJump_PressRelease.pdf
• Moolec Science Ltd. (“Moolec”) and LightJump Acquisition Corp. (“LightJump”), a special purpose acquisition company, have entered into a definitive business combination agreement. The transaction sets Moolec’s proforma equity value at $504 million, assuming no redemptions from shareholders of LightJump. Upon closing, the combined company is expected to be listed on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “MLEC”.
• Moolec, a science-based food ingredient company, focuses on developing real animal proteins in plants using Molecular Farming, a scalable, affordable, and sustainable technology which is the production of animal proteins using plants as small factories. The company’s product portfolio and pipeline leverages the agronomic efficiency of broadly used target crops, like soybeans and peas. Moolec targets the fast-growing alternative proteins market trend.
• Moolec holds a growing international patent portfolio for its Molecular Farming technology. Its first two products – plant-based dairy ingredient chymosin and nutritional oil GLA, both using safflower as a carrier crop - have achieved regulatory clearance and seed inventory scale-up activities were conducted in 2022, accelerating the development of soy and peabased products designed to replace meat.
• Moolec is backed by Nasdaq-listed Bioceres Crop Solutions Corp. (NASDAQ: BIOX), a fully integrated provider of crop productivity solutions enabling the transition to a carbon neutral agriculture; Theo I, a life sciences venture capital enterprise; and Union Group, a private equity management firm.
• Moolec expects to become the first Molecular Farming FoodTech company to be listed on Nasdaq Exchange as a category creator of the alternative protein landscape focused on this technology. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2022.
United Kingdom – June 15, 2022 – Moolec Science Ltd. (“Moolec Science”, “Moolec”), a sciencebased food ingredient company; and LightJump Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: LJAQ; “LightJump”), a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, announced today the entry into a definitive agreement for a business combination that would result in Moolec Science SA (the “Company”), a
newly created affiliate of Moolec incorporated in Luxembourg, becoming a publicly listed company.
Pursuant to the transactions contemplated by the business combination agreement, Moolec and LightJump will ultimately become wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Company (the “Combined Company”). The transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of 2022 and upon closing the Company is expected to be listed on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “MLEC”.
Moolec is a Molecular Farming pioneer in the new food industry that uses plants to produce real animal proteins. Molecular Farming enables the synthesis of real animal proteins’ DNA in any seed crop, carefully selecting each protein for its ability to add value in terms of a targeted functionality trait such as clotting, taste, texture, or nutritional value. The resulting proteins can then be used as ingredients in consumer food products providing tastier, more functional, and affordable animal-free protein alternatives.
Molecular Farming is unique in its ability to capitalize on the scale that extensive agriculture entails to achieve affordability. It is also cost efficient because it leverages biology, using plants and their inputs – sun, water, and soil – as small factories for the production of animal proteins. The plants are grown through traditional farming practices that result in economies of scale through high productivity volume production.
The Company´s first two products are Chymosin SPC, a bovine protein expressed in safflower that has curdling applications in the cheese industry, and gamma-linoleic acid (GLA), a nutritional oil technology sourced from Bioceres Crop Solutions. Both products have been cleared by regulatory authorities and the Company is currently ramping up seed inventories. Upon completion of corner stone milestones in these two products, Moolec has accelerated product development efforts to widen its technology reach, by using the two crops that are most broadly used as protein alternatives – soy and peas – to develop actual meat proteins.
In addition, Moolec's Molecular Farming platform has the potential to modify and enhance other plants using animal proteins, which could allow the Company to possibly consider other market opportunities. Such possible market opportunities include milk, egg, chicken and fish replacements, or other alternative biomaterials and cosmetics.
“Moolec Science is a category creator in the alternative protein landscape. Our Molecular Farming technology focuses on providing real animal proteins without using any animals, based on the genetic engineering of seeds to produce proteins the same way animals do,” said Gastón Paladini, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder. “As fourth generation of a family business that is one of the largest meat players in the Southern Cone, I have first-hand knowledge of the challenges faced by the industry. Moolec´s goal is to use science in food to overcome current global food security issues, building a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable food system.”
“LightJump Acquisition Corp. is excited to be partnering with Moolec Science, a FoodTech pioneer in Molecular Farming,” said Robert Bennett, Chief Executive Officer of LightJump Acquisition Corp.“We believe Moolec’s differentiated technology platform will be able to address the worldwide growing demand for animal proteins, while delivering them at a small fraction of the cost and environmental impact of existing approaches. We are committed to working alongside Moolec’s outstanding management team to support its expansion plans and its transition to becoming a
Nasdaq-listed company.”
“Bioceres Crop Solutions’ mission is to develop and bring to market technologies that can help agriculture transition towards carbon neutrality. We want to do this while increasing productivity, so that protecting our planet does not come at a cost to farmers or consumers. In this quest, we have developed unique technologies for drought tolerance and biologically enhanced nutrition, protection, and health for several major crops. Now, this is only part of the answer. Preserving resources is also about doing more with what is currently being produced, and here is where molecular farming is very powerful. Moolec is leading this life sciences’ category by engineering soybeans and other crops to directly produce key animal proteins, getting us a step closer to where we need to be,” said Federico Trucco, Bioceres Crop Solutions’ CEO.
Transaction Overview
The Moolec Science LightJump Acquisition Corp. business combination sets the Company’s proforma equity value at $504 million. As a result of the transaction, the Combined Company is expected to be funded with $138 million cash held in LightJump’s trust account, assuming no LightJump shareholders exercise their redemption rights at closing and before payment of transaction expenses. In addition, LightJump has entered into a backstop agreement with entities affiliated with Moolec to guarantee a minimum of $10 million at closing. Under the terms of the proposed transaction: (i) the current shareholders of Moolec will contribute all of their shares of Moolec to the Company in exchange for ordinary shares of the Company and
(ii) LightJump will merge with a newly formed wholly owned subsidiary of the Company and LightJump’s ordinary shares and warrants will be exchanged for ordinary shares and warrants of the Company. This will result in Moolec and LightJump being wholly owned subsidiaries of the Company. Cash proceeds raised in connection with the transaction will primarily be used to accelerate the
commercialization of late-stage products, Chymosin and GLA; expansion of R&D & Regulatory Approval efforts for the existing product pipeline; funding for team expansion and general corporate expenses; and organic & inorganic growth opportunities. The boards of directors of LightJump and Moolec have approved the proposed transaction. Completion of the proposed transaction is subject to shareholder approval of LightJump and other customary closing conditions, including a registration statement being declared effective by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). The transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of 2022.
On June 8, 2022, LightJump Acquisition Corp. filed with the SEC a preliminary proxy statement in connection with a proposal to extend the date by which LightJump must consummate a business combination.
Additional information about the proposed transaction, including a copy of the business combination agreement and investor presentation, will be provided in a Current Report on Form 8-K to be filed by LightJump Acquisition Corp. with the SEC and available at www.sec.gov. In addition, LightJump intends to file a proxy statement/registration statement which will form part of the Form F-4 to be filed by the Company with the SEC (the “Form F-4”) and will file other documents regarding
the proposed transaction with the SEC.
Advisors
EarlyBird Capital, a boutique investment bank, acted as financial advisor to LightJump. Linklaters LLP acted as legal counsel to Moolec, and K&L Gates LLP acted as legal counsel to LightJump in the transaction.
Investor Conference Call Information
Moolec Science and LightJump Acquisition Corp. will host a joint investor conference call to discuss the proposed transaction today, June 15, 2022 at 8:30 am ET. To listen to the prepared remarks via webcast, please visit www.lightjumpcap.com/investor-conference-call-video. A replay of the call will be available at the same link as well as on LightJump Acquisition Corp.’s website at www.lightjumpcap.com through September 30, 2022, at 11:59 pm ET.
About LightJump Acquisition Corp.
LightJump is a Delaware blank check company incorporated on July 28, 2020 formed for the purpose of entering into a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, recapitalization, reorganization or other similar business combination with one or more target businesses. For more information, visit www.lightjumpcap.com/lightjump-acquisition-corp.
About Moolec Science
Moolec is a science-based ingredient company focused on producing real animal proteins in plants through Molecular Farming, a disruptive technology in the alternative protein landscape. Its purpose is to upgrade taste, nutrition, and affordability of alternative protein products while building a more sustainable and equitable food system. The company’s technological approach aims to have the cost structure of plant-based solutions with the organoleptic properties and functionality of animal-based ones. Moolec’s technology has been under development for more than a decade and is known for pioneering the production of a bovine protein in a crop for the food industry. Moolec is run by a diverse team of Ph.Ds and Food Insiders, and operates in the United States, Europe, and South America. For more information, visit www.moolecscience.com.
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Circle USDC - >>> BlackRock, Fidelity and others to invest $400M in USDC stablecoin issuer Circle
TechCrunch
by Jacquelyn Melinek
April 12, 2022
https://finance.yahoo.com/blackrock-fidelity-others-invest-400m-141621168.html
Circle, a crypto-focused financial technology firm, has entered an agreement for a $400 million funding round, the company announced. It is expected to close in the second quarter of 2022.
Investors in the round include BlackRock, Fidelity Management and Research, Marshall Wace and Fin Capital.
In 2018, The Centre Consortium issued its USD Coin (USDC), a stablecoin that is pegged to the U.S. dollar on a 1:1 basis. This means every USDC is backed by $1 in reserves. The Centre has two founding members: Circle and the cryptocurrency exchange giant Coinbase.
In addition to the capital raise, BlackRock has entered a strategic partnership with Circle to be its primary asset manager of USDC cash reserves and explore capital market applications for its stablecoin, among other objectives. "Our broader strategic partnership with BlackRock, announced today, will allow us to explore new use cases where USDC may be an efficient resource in the financial services value chain," Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle, told TechCrunch.
Crypto is altering the investing landscape for even the most disciplined VCs
USDC is the second-largest stablecoin behind USD Tether (USDT) and the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, according to data on CoinMarketCap. Its market capitalization rose about 370% year over year from $10.82 billion to $50.83 billion and about $5 billion in volume was traded in the past 24 hours, up over 39%.
Although USDC ranks in second place for stablecoins, compared to USDT, it has about $32 billion less in market cap and a 24-hour volume that’s roughly $73.6 billion less than the No. 1 stablecoin.
The fresh capital will be used to promote the company’s strategic growth “as demand for dollar digital currency and related financial services continues to scale globally,” Circle said in a statement.
"This is a milestone moment for Circle and part of the “coming of age” of crypto," Allaire said. Circle is focused on continuing to increase mainstream adoption of USDC and blockchain technology for payments, commerce and financial applications, he added.
This funding comes at an interesting inflection point after the firm delayed its SPAC merger and doubled its valuation to $9 billion in February 2022. It was previously valued at $4.5 billion in July 2021. At the time of the delay, Circle terminated its previous agreement with Concord Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded SPAC, only to reach a new deal with the company for a merger.
The original deal had a termination date of April 3, 2022, but the new agreement has been pushed to December 8, 2022, with the potential to be delayed as far as January 31, 2023, under certain circumstances, according to a press release.
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_______________________
>>> The Ugly Truth About Trump Media Acquirer Digital World’s Shares
Many issues face investors in the company, above and beyond the sharp falloff of interest in Truth Social
The Street
by BRIAN O'CONNELL
MAR 20, 2022
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/the-ugly-truth-about-trump-media-acquirer-digital-worlds-shares?puc=yahoo&cm_ven=YAHOO
The SPAC that’s acquiring former President Donald Trump’s media company is facing a daunting list of negatives as it moves towards closing the transaction.
Real Money Columnist Brad Ginesin outlined the most notable ones recently.
“The problem is that DWAC is trading at an absurd valuation and its stock is highly likely to tank in the coming months,” Ginesin wrote on Real Money. “This is not the right market in which to speculate on an impossible-to-value stock with no earnings, scant revenue, uncertain prospects and buyers solely focused on the company's celebrity appeal,” Ginesin added.
“Yet people foolishly are buying the stock, with a toxic valuation, at precisely the wrong time,” he wrote.
"Last month, Trump Media unveiled its Twitter clone, Truth Social, which was followed by a moment of excitement as the app raced to number one in downloads," Ginesin wrote. "The initial enthusiasm quickly ran its course; now the app's ranking has plummeted, with the media outlet seeing barely any usage. This bodes poorly for the success of Truth Social and anyone invested in Digital World Acquisition.”
Given that Trump's previous media effort 'From the Desk of Donald Trump,' received minimal readership and shut down after 29 days "the status of his appeal is clearly in question,” Ginesin noted.
There’s more.
Since the deal to acquire Trump Media was announced last October, Digital World Acquisition has been highly volatile.
“Part of the enthusiasm stems from the limited number of shares outstanding before the deal closes, which has helped the stock trade at a frothy premium valuation,” Ginesin said. However, “once the deal is consummated, more than five times the current shares will be free to trade, taking the market cap from $3.4 billion to more than $17 billion. Compare that steep valuation to Twitter TWTR, with a $26 billion market cap and more than $5 billion in revenues.”
Hang on, though, there's even more to worry about. "Investors in a PIPE (private investment in public equity) have agreed to buy $1 billion in DWAC shares, free to sell immediately when the deal closes," Ginesin wrote. “The PIPE deal hands these preferred investors a minimum of a 40% discount to the market price with no lock-up agreement. This ought to give pause to any buyer of free-trading stock.”
Oh, and then there's the SEC probe of "possible violations in connection with consummating the deal as well as the trading of the stock." Until the deal does close, "a risk remains that the SEC may uncover an issue that delays or alters the closing process," Ginesin noted.
So, when and if the deal closes "a significant amount of shares will be free to sell with a cost basis far below the current price. Yet investors are buying into nothing more than hope and celebrity appeal – a bad combo as overvaluation and froth are mercilessly rooted out in this market,’ Ginesin said.
In the end, “the stock will likely face significant losses in the coming months.”
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>>> Knightscope IPO taking security robots public
The Robot Report
By Brianna Wessling |
December 6, 2021
https://www.therobotreport.com/knightscope-ipo-taking-security-robots-public/
Knightscope’s security robots can be used in a variety of facilities.
Knightscope, a Mountain View, Calif.-based developer of autonomous security robots, is going public on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol “KSCP.” Knightscope will be offering $40 million of Class A common stock at $10 per share.
Knightscope plans to use the proceeds from the initial public offering (IPO) to continue to scale its fleet of security robots and to invest in new technologies. The company has a line of four security robots, ranging from a stationary robot to an all-terrain one.
“On this important day, I wish to take a moment to thank the absolutely relentless team at Knightscope and our 28,000+ investors for their unwavering support,” said Knightscope chairman and CEO William Santana Li. “We are committed more than ever to our mission of making the United States of America the safest country in the world. We need to provide the brave women and men in uniform, on our own soil, cutting edge technology to help them make smarter, faster and safer decisions. They deserve only the best and so does every community in our great nation, as we work to reimagine public safety, together.”
Knightscope was founded in 2013 and has raised more than $75 million in funding. In 2020, the company gained its first federal purchase order through a General Services Administration (GSA) contract.
The company offers its robots for sale using a robots-as-a-service (RaaS) business model. RaaS is a capital expense heavy business model as the RaaS-provider (KnightScope) doesn’t sell the physical equipment to its customers, it only offers the robots in a subscription model. Thus the robots remain on the books for Knightscope throughout their useful lifetime.
Knightscope first announced its plans to go public at its shareholders meeting in September 2021. There, the company also announced it would be prioritizing its 28,000-plus investors first, allowing them to purchase stock before the rest of the public. You can watch a video of that meeting below.
According to an SEC filing, Knightscope’s revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2021 increased by $141,000 (9%) to $1.8 million. Revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2020 was $1.6 million.
Knightscope’s shares were listed for sale immediately following the closing of the NASDAQ on December 1, 2021.
In April 2020, Knightscope announced new software features that would help to encourage social distancing at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The software enables Knightscope robots to identify tight groupings of people and then play warning messages.
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>>> Rigetti Computing, a Global Leader in Full-Stack Quantum Computing, Announces Plans to Become Publicly Traded via Merger with Supernova Partners Acquisition Company II
https://www.rigetti.com/merger-announcement
Rigetti is on a mission to build the world’s most powerful computers to help solve humanity’s most important and pressing problems. The company has developed the first-of-its-kind scalable approach to building quantum processors.
Transaction values Rigetti at a pro forma equity value of approximately $1.5 billion. The combined company is expected to receive approximately $458 million in gross cash proceeds, which includes a fully committed PIPE in excess of $100 million, direct investment, and $345 million of cash held in the trust account of Supernova II, assuming no redemptions.
PIPE transaction subscribed to by top investors including funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.; Bessemer Venture Partners; Franklin Templeton; and In-Q-Tel.
New strategic partners are Keysight Technologies, Palantir Technologies and Ampere Computing.
Management of Rigetti Computing and Supernova II will host an investor call at 8:30 am ET on Wednesday, October 6, to discuss the proposed transaction. Details are below.
More investor information
BERKELEY, Calif. — Oct. 6, 2021 — Rigetti & Co., Inc. (“Rigetti”), a pioneer in full-stack quantum computing, announced today it has entered into a definitive merger agreement with Supernova Partners Acquisition Company II, Ltd. (“Supernova II”) (NYSE:SNII), a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company. When the transaction closes, the publicly traded company will be named Rigetti Computing, Inc. and its common stock is expected to be listed on the NYSE under the ticker “RGTI.”
Rigetti is a leader in scalable quantum processor technology. Scalability has been among the largest hurdles to bringing quantum computing to market, and Rigetti introduced its scalable superconducting chips in June 2021. Its patented multi-chip architecture is the building block for new generations of quantum processors that are expected to achieve a clear advantage over classical computers.
Quantum computing is one of the most transformative emerging technologies in the world today. Many of the world’s most important problems remain intractable, lying far beyond the capabilities of today’s supercomputers. Quantum computers process information in a fundamentally different way — solving problems simultaneously as opposed to sequentially — which will allow them, when scaled, to tackle problems of staggering computational complexity at unprecedented speed.
Quantum computing could be applied to a range of important uses such as enabling biotech companies to bring more effective therapies to market faster; researchers to develop more affordable clean energy sources; and financial companies to access faster and more accurate market insights to help reduce market volatility.
Rigetti will use the proceeds from the transaction to accelerate development of multiple generations of quantum processors and grow its commercial business. Rigetti expects to scale its quantum computers from 80 qubits in 2021, to 1,000 qubits in 2024, and to 4,000 qubits in 2026.
Rigetti’s distinctive quantum computers work in tandem with existing cloud and high-performance computing infrastructure to unlock powerful new capabilities to solve complex real-world problems. The company sells access to its machines through the Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services platform.
The PIPE transaction is subscribed to by top investors including: funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.; Bessemer Venture Partners; Franklin Templeton; and In-Q-Tel. Strategic investors include Keysight Technologies and Palantir Technologies. Ampere Computing will make a direct investment. These new strategic investors provide strong complementary technologies for advancing Rigetti’s quantum advantage, and build on Rigetti’s existing partnerships and collaborations with customers like Amazon Web Services, Astex Pharmaceuticals, DARPA, NASA, Standard Chartered Bank and the U.S. Department of Energy.
Rigetti CEO Chad Rigetti founded the company in 2013. The company has raised approximately $200 million in venture capital and today employs more than 130 people with offices in the United States, Canada, U.K., and Australia.
Supernova II is led by Michael Clifton, an investor who most recently helped lead global technology investing at The Carlyle Group; Robert Reid, a long-time senior partner at Blackstone; Spencer Rascoff, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Hotwire, Zillow, dot.LA and Pacaso and who led Zillow as CEO for nearly a decade; and Alexander Klabin, founder and CEO of Ancient and former managing partner, co-CIO and co-founder of Senator Investment Group.
Clifton is expected to join the Rigetti Board of Directors after the transaction closes.
Management comments
Chad Rigetti, Rigetti Computing CEO and Founder
“In the next decade one Rigetti quantum computer could be more powerful than today’s entire global cloud. Rigetti is the leading innovator in this space. Our team has solved the most pressing scientific problems associated with bringing quantum computing to market by creating a scalable computer and high-performance integration with existing computing systems. We plan to use this capital to accelerate our product development and accelerate our goal to bring this transformational computing capability to every major industry.”
Michael Clifton, Supernova II
“The widespread adoption of quantum computing will have a significant impact on the economy and humanity in the next decade and beyond, on par with the advent of mobile and cloud technologies. Rigetti systems’ speed and scalability set them apart amongst competitors. With its model of easy integration into existing systems, Rigetti’s technology will be used by businesses, governments and institutions across the globe.”
Transaction Overview
The business combination values the combined entity at a pro forma equity value of approximately $1.5 billion. Upon closing, the combined company will receive approximately $458 million in gross cash proceeds, including a fully committed PIPE in excess of $100 million, direct investment, and $345 million of cash held in the trust account of Supernova II, assuming no redemptions. The proposed transaction has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both Rigetti and Supernova II, and is subject to the approval of the stockholders of Supernova II and other customary closing conditions.
Additional information of the transaction terms and copies of the key transaction agreements will be provided in a current report on Form 8-K to be filed by Supernova II with the SEC and available at www.sec.gov.
Advisors
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. is serving as exclusive financial advisor to Rigetti. Cooley LLP is serving as legal counsel to Rigetti.
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC is serving as exclusive financial advisor to Supernova II. Latham & Watkins LLP is serving as legal counsel to Supernova II.
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. served as placement agents to Supernova II for the PIPE financing. Sidley Austin LLP served as counsel to the placement agents.
Conference Call
Management of Rigetti and Supernova Partners II will host an investor conference call on Wednesday, October 6, 2021 at 8:30 am ET to discuss the proposed business combination. A webcast of the call can be accessed at www.netroadshow.com/nrs/home/#!/?show=057a3ce4 or by visiting https://www.netroadshow.com/ with the entry code “Romeo9374”.
Alternatively the call can be accessed by dialing +1 (833) 470-1428 (domestic toll-free number) or +1 (404) 975-4839 (international) and providing the conference ID 400205. A replay of the call can be accessed by dialing +1 (855) 213-8235 (domestic toll-free number) or +1 (571) 982-7683 (international) and providing the conference ID 626929#.
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>>> IonQ Becomes First Publicly Traded, Pure-Play Quantum Computing Company; Closes Business Combination with dMY Technology Group III
10/01/2021
https://investors.ionq.com/news/news-details/2021/IonQ-Becomes-First-Publicly-Traded-Pure-Play-Quantum-Computing-Company-Closes-Business-Combination-with-dMY-Technology-Group-III/default.aspx
IonQ ushers in the era of quantum computing, lists on public market to begin trading on NYSE under ticker “IONQ” today, October 1, 2021
IonQ received gross proceeds of $636 million from transaction to fund growth and accelerate the commercialization of industry-leading quantum computers
COLLEGE PARK, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- IonQ, Inc. (“IonQ” or the “Company”) (NYSE: IONQ), a leader in quantum computing, completed its previously announced business combination with dMY Technology Group, Inc. III (“dMY”) (formerly NYSE: DMYI), a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, on September 30, 2021. Starting this morning, the common stock and warrants of the combined company, IonQ Inc., will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbols “IONQ” and “IONQ.WS,” respectively.
IonQ is a trailblazer in quantum computing with the world’s most powerful trapped-ion quantum computer, and is the only company with its quantum systems available through the cloud on Amazon Braket, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. This business combination provided IonQ with $636 million in gross proceeds to fund future growth and accelerate the commercialization of its industry-leading quantum computers.
“Quantum is here, and IonQ is leading the industry with our revolutionary trapped-ion technology,” said Peter Chapman, President and CEO of IonQ. “Over the past six years, we have taken this critical technology out of the lab and have developed it into a commercial product. This year, we are proud to have tripled our bookings expectations for 2021, and are further thrilled to have announced collaborations with Goldman Sachs, Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, GE Research and the University of Maryland. We are humbled by the interest in our public listing and are confident in our ability to deliver against our business plan. I’m incredibly grateful to the entire IonQ ecosystem of employees, customers and stakeholders – this is just the beginning.”
Last month, IonQ announced that it had tripled its expectation for 2021 total contract bookings from its previously announced target of $5 million to $15 million. IonQ believes this is a demonstration of the real and rapidly accelerating need for quantum computing among enterprise customers and cements IonQ as a leader in quantum computing.
“IonQ’s listing today marks an incredibly significant milestone for quantum computing – the demand for this technology is real and the path to commercialization and scale is tangible,” said Niccolo de Masi, CEO of dMY Technology group of companies. “We’re thrilled to continue to partner with the IonQ management team and look forward to celebrating the company’s future accomplishments and milestones.”
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC served as the exclusive financial advisor to IonQ. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC served as the exclusive financial advisor to dMY III. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC also acted as co-lead placement agents on the PIPE. Needham & Company also acted as placement agent on the PIPE. Cooley LLP and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP represented IonQ and dMY III, respectively, as legal counsel.
About IonQ
IonQ, Inc. is a leader in quantum computing, with a proven track record of innovation and deployment. IonQ’s next-generation quantum computer is the world’s most powerful trapped-ion quantum computer, and IonQ has defined what it believes is the best path forward to scale. IonQ is the only company with its quantum systems available through the cloud on Amazon Braket, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as through direct API access. IonQ was founded in 2015 by Christopher Monroe and Jungsang Kim based on 25 years of pioneering research. To learn more, visit www.ionq.com.
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>>> Arteris IP Announces Pricing of Initial Public Offering
Yahoo Finance
October 26, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/arteris-ip-announces-pricing-initial-033600681.html
CAMPBELL, Calif., Oct. 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Arteris IP, a leading provider of system-on-chip (SoC) system intellectual property (IP) consisting of network-on-chip (NoC) interconnect IP and IP deployment software, today announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 5,000,000 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $14.00 per share. The gross proceeds to Arteris IP from the offering, before deducting the underwriting discounts and commissions and offering expenses, are expected to be $70.0 million. All of the shares are being offered by Arteris IP. In addition, Arteris IP has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 750,000 additional shares of its common stock at the initial public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions.
The shares are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Market on October 27, 2021 under the ticker symbol "AIP," and the offering is expected to close on October 29, 2021, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.
Jefferies LLC and Cowen are serving as lead bookrunners and BMO Capital Markets is serving as joint book-running manager for the offering. Northland Capital Markets and Rosenblatt Securities are acting as co-managers for the offering.
A registration statement relating to the sale of these securities has been filed with, and declared effective by, the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 26, 2021. Copies of the registration statement can be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at www.sec.gov. The offering is being made only by means of a written prospectus, forming a part of the effective registration statement. A copy of the final prospectus relating to the offering may be obtained, when available, from: Jefferies LLC, Attention: Equity Syndicate Prospectus Department, 520 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022; by phone at (877) 821-7388; or by e-mail at Prospectus_Department@Jefferies.com; and Cowen and Company, LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, Attn: Prospectus Department, by phone at (833) 297-2926, or by email at PostSaleManualRequests@broadridge.com.
This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.
About Arteris IP
Arteris IP is a leading provider of System IP consisting of NoC interconnect and other IP as well as IP Deployment software that accelerate creation of SoC type semiconductors. Our products enable our customers to deliver increasingly complex SoCs that not only process data but are also able to make decisions.
Investor Contacts
Nick Hawkins, VP and CFO
Arteris, Inc.
ir@arteris.com
Erica Mannion or Mike Funari
Sapphire Investor Relations, LLC
+1 617 542 6180
ir@arteris.com
Media Contact
Kurt Shuler
Arteris IP
+1 408 470 7300
kurt.shuler@arteris.com
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>>> Moneyman Behind Trump’s Media Company Runs a Firm in Wuhan
Bloomberg
by Blake Schmidt, Felipe Marques and Heather Perlberg
October 22, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/moneyman-behind-trump-media-company-233316506.html
(Bloomberg) -- From a WeWork office in Miami, an obscure financier by the name of Patrick Orlando has become an unlikely power behind what is, for a meme-stock minute, the ultimate MAGA stock: the nascent media company of former President Donald J. Trump.
Orlando’s firm is set to be the money behind Trump Media and Technology Group, the former president’s attempt to fight back against Big Tech. Trump says he plans to start with a social network called Truth Social but has broader ambitions to create a conglomerate -- with news, streaming and technology businesses to compete with CNN and Disney+.
The company will go public through a merger with Orlando’s Digital World Acquisition Corp., and if all goes according to plan, it’ll happen before the 2022 mid-term elections, enabling Trump to reach millions of supporters after he was kicked off Twitter and Facebook for inciting insurrection in the Capitol.
The head-snapping news that Trump was seeking to launch his own platform via a special purpose acquisition company sent Digital World’s shares soaring, driven by retail investors piling in. The stock rose more than 350% Thursday, giving it a $1.8 billion valuation, and has already gained 65% in U.S. pre-market trading on Friday.
Whether Trump can successfully pull off his next business venture was, for the moment, almost beside the point. The surge represented the convergence of two powerful forces -- one financial, the other political -- in a markets-meet-social-media craze akin to the wild run in GameStop earlier this year.
The deal brings together an unlikely cast of characters.
Orlando, a former Deutsche Bank AG derivatives trader, started banking firm Benessere Capital almost a decade ago. He’s also co-founded a sugar-trading company and worked for a sugar processor.
Most recently he’s embraced blank check companies. Orlando is also the chief executive officer of Yunhong International, a SPAC incorporated in the Cayman Islands and whose offices are in Wuhan, China. Yunhong raised $60 million last year and was meant to merge with battery manufacturer Giga Carbon Neutrality, but the deal was scrapped in September.
Orlando didn’t reply to calls and an email asking for comment.
Digital World raised $293 million in September from a group of hedge funds including D.E. Shaw, Saba Capital Management, Highbridge Capital Management and Palm Beach, Florida-based Lighthouse Investment Partners.
Saba, run by Boaz Weinstein, told the New York Times his investment firm sold its holdings in Digital World in the first hours of trading on Thursday for a small profit.
“Many investors are grappling with hard questions about how to incorporate their values into their work. For us, this was not a close call,” Weinstein said in a statement to the New York Times.
Unlike most SPACs it doesn’t have PIPE investors, or private investment in public equity. They buttress SPAC mergers by helping enable a deal to go through even when early investors decide to redeem their shares.
Digital World’s board is light with people with media expertise.
Its Chief Financial Officer is Luiz Philippe de Orleans e Braganca, a member of Brazil’s national congress. He’s frequently referred to as a “prince” because of his claim to the defunct Brazilian throne as a descendant of Emperor Pedro II. Braganca, who’s called for a return to the monarchy in Brazil, has worked as a director for Time Warner’s AOL Latin America division.
“This new platform will fight the tyranny of Bigtechs,” Braganca, 52, said in an Instagram post that included a photo of himself and Trump.
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>>> Trump's social media deal ignites 350% gain in SPAC's shares
Yahoo Finance
by Medha Singh and Sinéad Carew
October 21, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-strikes-spac-deal-social-150352200.html
(Reuters) -Former U.S. President Donald Trump's deal to create a social media app after Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc barred him won an exuberant endorsement from investors, with shares in a shell company backing the plan closing up more than 350% on Thursday after rising more than 400% earlier in the day.
Trump Media and Technology Group and Digital World Acquisition Corp, a Special Purpose Acquisition Vehicle (SPAC), announced on Wednesday https://www.reuters.com/world/us/former-us-president-donald-trump-launches-new-social-media-platform-2021-10-21 they would merge to create a social media app called TRUTH Social. Trump's company said it plans a beta launch - unveiling a trial version - next month and a full roll-out in the first quarter of 2022.
SPACs use money raised through an initial public offering to take a private company public. This deal's announcement lacked the trappings of the detailed business plans Wall Street is accustomed to in SPAC mergers, from naming a leadership team to giving detailed financing earnings and projections.
Even so, shares of Miami-based Digital World closed up 356.8% at $45.50 a share on Nasdaq after soaring more than 400% earlier in the session. At the closing price, its market capitalization stood at $1.47 billion, up from $321 million on Wednesday.
With volume of more than 477 million shares, it was the most actively traded stock on the exchange, drawing chatter on forums such as Reddit, where retail investors have driven so-called meme stocks to values not supported by mainstream financial analysis. On Twitter and Stocktwits, some users cheered the rally with posts displaying rocket ships and GIFs of Trump.
The venture may provide the first real test of the power of right-wing social media https://www.reuters.com/technology/what-is-trumps-new-venture-what-are-its-odds-success-2021-10-21 with the full force of Trump's support. Questions remain about how it plans to make money and avoid the same issues that led major social media platforms to banish him.
Some investors marveled at the rally and wondered whether the gains would last.
"I have never seen anything like this, such share reaction based on hopes and dreams," Kristi Marvin, a former investment banker who founded research firm SPACInsider, told other investors on a Twitter Spaces discussion.
Others said the market reaction reflected support for Trump as well as a bet that a platform with him would draw followers.
"Up to this point there hasn't been a publicly traded vehicle for those that support the former president," said Jake Dollarhide, co-founder of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Michael O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading in Stamford, Connecticut, said not just Trump supporters but also opponents, media and investors would want to get on the platform to keep track of what Trump says.
Still, its future is far from certain. Digital World, led by former investment banker Patrick Orlando, has launched at least four SPACs and plans to launch two more but none of them have completed a deal yet. Orlando did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
DIRECT AND UNFILTERED
People close to the Republican former president, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said Trump has sought to set up his own social media company since leaving the White House. Trump, contemplating another White House run in 2024, has been frustrated that he does not have a direct and unfiltered connection with his millions of followers after Twitter and Facebook barred him, these people said.
Social media giants suspended Trump's accounts after his supporters rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 following an incendiary speech he gave repeating false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud.
Twitter found that Trump posts violated its "glorification of violence" https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension policy. Facebook found that Trump praised violence https://about.fb.com/news/2021/06/facebook-response-to-oversight-board-recommendations-trump in connection with the deadly attack in which rioters sought to block the formal congressional certification of his election loss to President Joe Biden.
In a press release announcing the deal, Trump said, "I'm excited to soon begin sharing my thoughts on TRUTH Social and to fight back against Big Tech."
Facebook shares were up 0.3%. Twitter shares were down 0.6%.
Trump Media said it would receive $293 million in cash that Digital World Acquisition had in a trust if no shareholder of the acquisition firm chooses to cash in their shares.
The soaring share price could increase the likelihood of a deal closing. Investors in the SPAC must eventually choose whether to redeem their shares at the IPO price of $10 per share, which is now much lower than the level at which what many would have bought.
Attempts to float alternatives to Twitter and Facebook have faltered in the past. Parler, a social media app backed by prominent Republican Party donor Rebekah Mercer and popular with U.S. conservatives, had several tech companies cut ties with it https://www.reuters.com/technology/parler-returns-apples-app-store-names-new-ceo-2021-05-17 after the Jan. 6 riot.
GETTR, a Twitter-style platform started by former Trump adviser Jason Miller, claimed more than 1.5 million users in its first 11 days after being launched https://www.reuters.com/world/us/former-trump-aide-miller-launches-social-media-site-gettr-2021-07-01 in July. Miller was unable to get Trump to join the platform.
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$RKLB launched a couple days ago. I’m up 30 percent so far and setting target for $140 roughly based on the valuation
It’s around 500 million market cap, they have roughly 800 million in cash plus a valuation (without the cash) of 4.1 billion.
They also just landed a contract with NASA and currently have USA NRO missions under their belt.
>>> Top Recent IPOs: New Investment Opportunities
By Aimee Bohn
Investment U
Aug 5, 2021
https://investmentu.com/recent-ipos/
Knowing about recent IPOs is a great way to stay up to date on the IPO market. Initial public offerings can often provide great investment opportunities – but they don’t always. Below is a short list of some of the top recent IPOs by month.
Top Recent IPOs: July
July IPOs
Sentage Holdings (SNTG)
Sentage Holdings is a Shanghai, China-based financial service provider. The company offers a range of financial services including consumer loan repayment and collection management, loan recommendation and prepaid payment network services.
For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2019, Sentage Holdings reported $3.97 million in cash. At the end of 2020, the company’s reported revenue lowered to $3.6 million. Sentage Holdings’ total assets were $1.83 million in December 2019. By the end of 2020, the company’s total assets rose to $2.78 million. The firm’s total liabilities decreased from $2.6 million in 2019 to $1.93 million in 2020.
The company filed in March and priced on July 8. It issued 4 million shares at $5 per share of SNTG stock. A $20 million profit came from the offering. The company’s market cap at the $5 price per share was $70 million.
You can look at Sentage Holdings’ prospectus here.
First Day Return: 597.8%
Icosavax (ICVX)
Icosavax is a Phase 1 biotech aiming to develop vaccines for respiratory diseases. The company is dedicated to advancing vaccines against severe life-threatening respiratory diseases to protect the most at-risk populations. Icosavax has vaccine candidates for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), human metapneumovirus (hMPV), and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
In December 2020, the company’s recorded cash was $15.5 million. As of March 31, 2021, Icosavax recorded $125 million in cash. In just three months, the company’s cash flow grew over 700%. In December 2020, Icosavax recorded $16.2 million total assets and $12.8 million in total liabilities. By March 31, 2020, the company’s total assets grew to $125.4 million. Total liabilities lowered to $5.9 million.
Icosavax filed on July 7 and priced on July 28. Shares listed under the ticker ICVX on the Nasdaq exchange. The company priced at the midpoint of its $14 to $16 price range at $15. The company offered 12.1 million shares of common stock for an $182 million offering.
You can look at Icosavax’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 133.1%
Sight Sciences (SGHT)
Sight Sciences ??provides medical and surgical devices for eye diseases. The firm aims to transform treatment paradigms from outdated approaches to improve the quality of patient care. The company’s portfolio includes the OMNI Surgical System and the TearCare System. The marketed products target some of the most prevalent and underserved eye diseases, glaucoma and dry eye disease.
The company saw revenue grow each year since 2018. For the year ended December 31, 2019, the company recorded $23.3 million in revenue. For the same period in 2020, the company’s recorded revenue grew to $27.6 million. Sight Sciences recorded $21.2 million in cash in December 2019. For the same period in 2020, the company’s recorded cash grew to $61.5 million.
Doximity filed on June 23 and went priced on July 14. Shares listed under the ticker SGHT on the Nasdaq exchange.The offering consisted of 10 million shares priced at $24. This was the upper range of its $23 to $24 price range, raising $240 million. The Sight Sciences IPO gave the company a post valuation of about $1 billion.
You can look at Sight Sciences’ prospectus here.
First Day Return: 39.6%
Duolingo (DUOL)
Duolingo is an online language learning service. The platform offers free courses in 40 languages. Users can select from a wide range of languages, from popular choices like French and Spanish to endangered ones like Sottish Gaelic. The company reported 40 million monthly users and 1.8 million paying subscribers as of March 31, 2021.
For the year ended December 31, 2019, Duolingo reported revenue of $70.8 million. It grew to $161.7 million in 2020. For the same period, Duolingo recorded $50 million in gross profit. The company is profitable, with reported gross profit more than doubling to $115.7 million in 2020. The company’s net loss was recorded at $13.6 million in 2019 and $15.8 million in 2020.
Duolingo filed on June 28 and priced July 27. Shares listed under the ticker DUOL on the Nasdaq exchange. The offering consisted of 5.1 million shares priced at $102. This was higher than its proposed $95 to $100 price range. The company raised $521 million in its initial public offering.
You can look at Duolingo’s prospectus here. For more information on the DUOL stock, check out this article for the latest news for the Duolingo IPO.
First Day Return: 36.3%
Absci (ABSI)
Absci is a biotech company that aims to develop protein therapies. The company’s goal is to expand biological possibilities and translate partners’ ideas into patient-ready drugs. Absci built its technology to enable better, faster and smarter biologic drug discovery and cell line development. The firm calls it Integrated Drug Creation™.
The company has seen revenue grow since 2019. For that year, revenue was $2 million. It increased in 2020 to $4.8 million. For the year in 2019, the company’s recorded cash was $13 million. And it increased greatly in March 2021 to $180.8 million. However, the company’s reported total liabilities were $160 million for March 2021. This was much higher than its December 2019 report of $7.9 million in total liabilities.
Absci filed to go public on June 30. Shares were priced shortly after on July 21 at $16 a share. This was the midrange of its $15 to $17 price range. The company offered 12.5 million shares and raised $200 million. This gave the company a post valuation of $2 billion.
You can look at Absci’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 34.9%
Top Recent IPOs: JuneTop Recent June IPO
Pop Culture Group (CPOP)
Pop Culture Group is a Chinese company based in Xiamen. Its platform is dedicated to promoting hip-hop culture. The company’s goal is to “promote hip-hop culture and its values of love, peace, unity, respect, and having fun, and to promote cultural exchange with respect to hip-hop between the United States and China.” The company engages in entertainment events, hip-hop related online programs and other event planning services targeted toward the younger generation.
Entertainment businesses were hit hard in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And the company’s finances reflect it. For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2019, revenue was $19 million. It dropped to $15.7 million for the same period in 2020. In 2019, net income totaled $5.9 million. And it decreased in 2020 to $4.5 million.
The company filed in March and priced on June 29. It issued 6.2 million shares at $6 per share of CPOP stock. A $37 million profit came from the offering. The company offered 0.2 million more shares than anticipated. The company’s market cap after going public was $110 million.
You can look at Pop Culture Group’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 405%
Alzamend Neuro (ALZN)
Alzamend Neuro is a clinical-stage biotech company. It focuses on developing products to treat neurodegenerative diseases and psychiatric disorders. The company aims to bring treatments and cures to market at a reasonable cost as quickly as possible. Its primary target is Alzheimer’s disease. The company has two novel therapeutic drug candidates, AL001 and AL002, that are moving toward clinical development.
As of April 30, 2019, the company recorded $40,000 in cash. By 2020, the company’s recorded cash grew to $90,000. For the same period, Alzamend Neuro recorded $1.8 million in total assets and $1 million in total liabilities. Looking at net loss, the company recorded $4.85 for the year ended April 30, 2019. It decreased to $4.4 million in 2020.
Alzamend Neuro filed on May 10th and priced on June 14. The company offered 2.5 million shares of common stock selling at $5 per share. The Alzamend Neuro IPO gave the company a market cap of $543 million.
You can look at Alzamend Neuro’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 170%
Doximity (DOCS)
Doximity is a San Francisco-based networking platform for medical professionals. The platform has established itself as the LinkedIn for doctors. Over 1.8 million medical professionals use the platform as of March 31, 2021. Doximity’s mission is to help every physician be more productive and provide better care for their patients.
The company saw revenue grow each year since 2019. For the year ended March 31, 2019, the company recorded $85.5 million in revenue. For the same period in 2020, the company’s recorded revenue grew to $116 million. Doximity recorded $74.8 million in gross profit and $101.5 million in 2020. As of March 31, 2021, Doximity has $142.5 million in cash and $251.7 million in total assets.
Doximity filed on May 28th and went public almost a month later on June 23rd. The offering consisted of 23.3 million shares priced at $26. This was higher than the $20 to $23 price range, raising $606 million. The Doximity IPO gave the company a market cap of about $10 billion.
You can look at Doximity’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 103.8%
Xometry (XMTR)
Xometry is an online marketplace for on-demand manufacturing. The company’s vision is to drive efficiency, sustainability and innovation by lowering the barriers to entry to the manufacturing ecosystem. The marketplace is artificial intelligence-enabled to help buyers source manufactured parts and assemblies from various sellers.
For the year ended December 31, 2019, Xometry reported revenue of $80.2 million. It grew to $141.4 million in 2020. For the same period, Xometry recorded $14.7 million in gross profit. The company is profitable, growing to $33.3 million in 2020. The company’s net loss was recorded at $30.9 million in 2019 and 31 million in 2020.
Xometry filed with the SEC on June 4th. It priced its shares a few weeks later on June 29th. The offering consisted of 6.8 million shares priced at $44. This was higher than its proposed $38 to $42 price range. The company raised $303 million in its initial public offering.
You can look at Xometry’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 98.6%
Kanzhun (BZ)
Kanzhun is an online recruitment platform based in Beijing, China. The company is focused on redefining career development by changing the online recruitment industry in its country. Its core product, BOSS Zhipin, connects job seekers and enterprise users to create an efficient and useful experience.
The company has seen revenue grow since 2019. For that year, revenue was $154.3 million. It increased in 2020 to $298 million. For the year in 2019, the company’s recorded cash totaled $62.9 million. And it increased greatly in 2020 to $612.7 million. However, the company reported a net loss of $144 million for 2020. This was much higher than its 2019 net loss of $77.6 million.
Kanzhun filed to go public on May 21, 2020. Shares were priced shortly after on June 10th at $19 a share. This was the high end of its $17 to $19 price range. The company offered 48 million shares and raised $912 million. This gave the company a market cap of $14.78 billion.
You can look at Kanzhun’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 95.8%
Top Recent IPOs: May
E-Home Household Services who provides home and housekeeping services was the top recent IPO for May.
E-Home Household Service Holdings (Nasdaq: EJH)
E-Home is a Chinese household service company. Based in Fuzhou, the company operates its platform across 32 provinces. It provides home appliance and housekeeping services. In order to deliver on-site home appliance services, E-Home partners with more than 2,600 individuals and service stores to provide technicians. For housekeeping, the company works with more than 1,000 independent contractors. E-Home claims its platform allows providers to access a larger customer base while also providing customers with the best home services.
The company provided financial data for the years 2018 and 2019. Total revenue for the year ending June 30, 2018, was $45.8 million. It increased 11.7% to $51.15 million in 2019. Additionally, E-Home was able to decrease its total operating expenses from 2018 to 2019, bringing in a higher income from operations in the latter year. Net income was $9.7 million and $10.2 million in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
The reason E-Home doesn’t have any 2020 or 2021 financial data is that the company filed to IPO back in August 2019. But it didn’t price until May 2021. The offer price was a midrange one, at $4.50 per share. A total of 5.56 million shares were offered for a deal size of $25 million. The recent IPO gave E-Home a market cap of $151 million.
You can look at E-Home Household Service Holdings’ prospectus here.
First Day Return: 1,100%
Jiuzi Holdings (Nasdaq: JZXN)
Jiuzi is a retail franchise. It sells new-energy vehicles in third- and fourth-tier Chinese cities. Vehicles include battery-operated and plug-in electric vehicles. At the time the company’s prospectus was filed in August 2020, it had 18 franchise stores and one company-owned store. Jiuzi sources its new-energy vehicles from more than 20 manufacturers.
For the year ending October 31, 2019, Jiuzi’s total net revenue was $7.98 million. It grew 2.9% to $8.21 million, according to the prospectus. Additionally, Jiuzi was able to decrease cost of revenue. That led to an increase in gross profit from 2019 to 2020. Gross profit came in at $4.86 million and $6 million, respectively, for a growth rate of 23.8%.
Although this recent IPO filed back in 2020, the company priced on May 17, 2021. Shares were priced at $5, the midpoint of their original price range. The offer included 5.2 million shares, for a deal size of $26 million. The IPO gave Jiuzi a market cap of $101 million.
You can look at Jiuzi Holdings’ prospectus here.
First Day Return: 272.4%
Day One Biopharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: DAWN)
Day One is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. It’s dedicated to developing and commercializing therapies for cancer patients of all ages, but its main focus for clinical efforts is on pediatric patients living with cancer. Day One’s lead product is an oral therapy demonstrating anti-tumor activity in both pediatric and adult populations with specific genetics. The product is in a Phase 2 trial after receiving a “breakthrough therapy” designation from the FDA based on a Phase 1 trial.
Since Day One doesn’t have any commercial products, the company doesn’t have any revenue to report. In 2019, its net loss was $17 million. It grew to $43.85 million in 2020, a negative growth of 158%. For the three months ending on March 31, 2020, net loss was about $2 million. But for the same time period ending March 31, 2021, net loss totaled $16.1 million. However, on the company’s balance sheet, Day One shows cash and equivalents of $154.9 million. This number was expected to grow to $300.5 million after its recent IPO.
Day One filed to go public on May 4, 2021. It priced on May 26. The company sold shares at $16 a share, the top end of its original price range. The offer included 10 million shares for a deal size of $160 million. The recent IPO gave Day One a market cap of $965 million.
You can look at Day One Biopharmaceuticals’ prospectus here.
First Day Return: 61.8%
Flywire (Nasdaq: FLYW)
Flywire is a global payment software company. Its platform is used by clients and customers for payment transactions. Flywire aims to tackle sectors of the global economy it believes are in the early stages of adopting digital processes. It identified education, healthcare, travel and business-to-business payments as opportunities worth $11.7 trillion in total.
The company’s finances show growing revenue. In 2019, revenue was $94.9 million. It increased to $131.8 million in 2020 for a growth of about 39%. For the three months ending March 31, 2020, revenue was $32.7 million, and it grew to $45 million for the same period in 2021. However, Flywire is still reporting net losses. In 2019, its total net loss was $20.1 million. It decreased to $11.1 million in 2020, and the company had a net income of $3.7 million for the first three months of the year. But for the first three months of 2021, Flywire reported a net loss again, totaling $8.65 million.
Flywire filed on May 3, 2021, and priced on May 25. The recent IPO sold 10.44 million shares at $24, the top of its original price range. That led to a deal size of $251 million. The offering gave Flywire a market cap of $2.8 billion.
You can look at Flywire’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 46.3%
The Honest Company (Nasdaq: HNST)
Actress Jessica Alba founded The Honest Company in 2011. It’s a consumer products company. Honest strives to create products and a community for environmentally conscious consumers looking to lead a clean lifestyle. It has three categories of products: Diapers and Wipes, Skin and Personal Care, and Household and Wellness. These represent 63%, 26% and 11% of the company’s 2020 revenue, respectively. Honest uses an omnichannel approach and aims to expand both its digital and retail channels. These include strategic partnerships with Costco, Target and Amazon launched in 2013, 2014 and 2017, respectively.
For the year 2019, Honest’s revenue was $235.6 million. It grew to $300.5 million in 2020, a growth rate of 27.5%. However, the company hasn’t reported any net income to date. In 2019, net loss totaled $31.1 million. Honest was able to decrease its net loss in 2020, though, bringing it down to $14.5 million.
Honest filed on April 9, 2021. The company priced its IPO on May 4. The offer price was $16, just under the top of its original price range. Honest offered 25.8 million shares for a deal size of $413 million. The recent IPO gave Alba’s company a market cap of $1.65 billion.
You can look at The Honest Company’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 43.8%
Recent IPOs: April
April's recent IPOs saw Esports Technologies, a competitive gaming platform for gamers like the one pictured, bring in the highest return on the first day of trading for IPOs that month.
Esports Technologies (Nasdaq: EBET)
Esports Technologies operates a platform for esports and competitive gaming. It also has an online gambling platform, gogawi.com. Esports is the competitive playing of video games by amateurs and professionals in teams or individually. The company claims it offer real money betting on esports events around the world. Some popular titles include Counter-Strike: GO, League of Legends, Rocket League and Warcraft 3.
For the year ended September 30, 2019, Esports Technologies’ revenue was almost $141,000. It went up to nearly $196,000 for 2020. And for the three months ended December 31, 2021, revenue was just under $11,000. Additionally, Esports Technologies now has net loss. In 2019, the company recorded net income of about $24,000. But in 2020, it dropped to a net loss of $573,000. And for December 31, 2021, the company recorded $2.1 million in net loss. However, Esports Technologies had $2.6 million in cash and cash equivalent, which grew to $16.7 million after its recent IPO.
Esports Technologies filed on March 10, 2021. It went public on April 14, 2021. The offering sold 2.4 million shares at $6 per share. The deal raised $14 million for a market cap of $124 million.
You can look at Esports Technologies’ prospectus here.
First Day Return: 507%
Recursion Pharmaceutical
Recursion is a clinical-stage biotechnology company. Its focus is decoding biology with innovations from biology, chemistry, automation, data science and engineering. The goal is to improve patient lives and industrialize drug discovery. Recursion uses the Recursion Operating System, one of the world’s largest biological and chemical datasets. It also has the Recursion Map, a suit of custom software, algorithms and machine learning tools to further explore biology.
Recursion’s revenue is made from grant and operating revenue. In 2019, it totaled $608,000. This grew to $549,000 in 2020. But like most clinical-stage companies, Recursion shows net losses from the last two year. It went from a net loss of about $62,500 in 2019 to $87,000 in 2020. On the other hand, the balance sheet shows $262,000 in cash and cash equivalents as of December 31, 2020. The recent IPO helped bring that to $651,800, according to prospectus estimates.
Recursion filed to go public on March 22, 2021. The company priced on April 15, 2021 at $18, the high end of its range. The offering included 24.2 million shares for a deal price of $436 million. The recent IPO gave Recursion a market cap of $3.3 million.
You can look at Recursion Pharmaceutical’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 73.9%
Privia Health Group
Privia Health is a technology company working with medical groups, health plans and health systems. Its goal is to optimize physician practices, improve patient experiences and reward doctors for giving high-value care. The company also the “Privia Platform” for virtual care settings.
Revenue for the year 2018 was $657.6 million. It grew to $786.4 million in 2019 for a year-over-year growth of 19.5%. For 2020, revenue totaled $817.1 million for a growth of 4%. Looking at net income, Privia Health had a net loss of $4.2 million in 2018. But in 2019, the company managed to record net income of $8.2 million. It increased to $30.9 million in 2020 for a growth of 276.8%. Balance sheet cash went from $84.6 million to $233.4 million after Privia Health’s recent IPO.
Privia Health Group filed on April 7, 2021. It went public two weeks later, pricing on April 28. Shares priced at $23 a share. The offer included 19.5 million shares for a deal size of $449 million. This gave Privia Health a market cap of $2.8 billion.
You can look at Privia Health Group’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 51.1%
KnowBe4
KnowBe4 is the developer of a security awareness platform. It lets organizations asses, monitor and minimize the ongoing cybersecurity threat of social engineering attacks. KnowBe4’s approach uses cloud-based software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, advanced analytics and insights with engaging content. Its three goals are to drive awareness, change human behavior and enable a security-minded culture, effectively reducing risks.
The company saw revenue grow each year since 2018. For that year, revenue was $71.3 million. It increased in 2019 to $120.6 million for a growth rate of 69.1%. And for the year 2020, revenue totaled $174.9 million. That’s a year-over-year growth of 45%. But the company is yet to report net income. In 2018, KnowBe4 had a net loss of $9.25 million. And it increased greatly in 2019 to $124.3 million. However, the company reported a net loss of $2.4 million for 2020.
KnowBe4 filed on March 19, 2021 and went public almost a month later, pricing on April 21. Shares were priced at the low end of the range, selling for $16 a share. The offer included 9.5 million shares for a deal size of $152 million. The recent IPO gave KnowBe4 a market cap of $2.9 billion.
You can look at KnowBe4’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 50.9%
Infobird
Infobird is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider. It offers customer engagement solutions in China. Infobird provides holistic software solutions to help corporate clients deliver and manage customer engagement activities at all stages of the process, including pre-sales, sales and post-sales activity. The company also offers AI-powered cloud-based sales force management software.
For the year 2018, Infobird recorded $18.8 million in revenue. It decreased to $18.25 million in 2019. For the six months ended June 30, 2019, revenue was $9.4 million. It dropped to $6.2 million for the same period in 2020. But the company has net income recorded on their income statement as well. In 2018, net income totaled $2.4 million. And it increased in 2019 to $5.1 million. For the six months ended June 30, 2019, net income was nearly $2 million. It decreased in 2020 to $1.6 million.
Infobird filed on December 9, 2020. It priced on April 19, 2021 at $4 a share. The offering included 6.25 million shares for a deal size of $25 million. Infobird’s recent IPO gave it a market cap of $101 million.
You can look at Infobird’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 50.8%
Recent IPOs: March
In the top recent IPOs of March, Design Therapeutics had the best first day return.
Design Therapeutics (Nasdaq: DSGN)
Design Therapeutics is a biotech company. Its focus is small-molecule therapeutics called gene targeted chimeras (GeneTACs). GeneTACs target and modify the underlying causes of a disease. Design Therapeutics is currently pre-clinical stage. However, it plans to start clinical trials for its lead program by the first half of 2022.
The company doesn’t have any commercial products. Instead, Design Therapeutics’ revenue comes from grants. In 2019, grant revenue was $834,000. And in 2020, it decreased greatly to $226,000. The company’s net loss also took a hit. It went from $2 million in 2019 to $8.3 million in 2020. However, Design Therapeutics’ balance sheet shows cash and cash equivalents at $36.1 million for 2020. That’s up from $77,000 in 2019.
Design Therapeutics filed with the SEC on March 5, 2021. The company priced on March 25. The offering consisted of 12 million shares at a price of $20. This was the high end of the company’s range, raising $240 million. The Design Therapeutics IPO gave a market cap of $1.1 billion.
You can look at Design Therapeutics’ prospectus here.
First Day Return: 107.5%
Ikena Oncology (Nasdaq: IKNA)
Ikena Oncology develops cancer therapies. These therapies target signaling pathways that help drive cancer growth and spread. Additionally, these pathways currently have no treatments. By doing this, Ikena believes it can address a high volume of unmet needs. Since starting operations in 2016, the company has five programs in studies or clinical development. It plans to submit an Investigational New Drug application to the FDA in the second half of 2021.
The company doesn’t have products for sale. Instead, it funds operations through private investments, payments from a collaboration agreement and “related party revenue.” In 2019, this totaled $13.75 million. However, that same year, Ikena’s operating expenses were $18.5 million. The year ended with a net loss of $16.8 million. For 2020, revenue dropped to $9.2 million. And operation expenses increased to $44.5 million. This led to an increased net loss of $44.25 million in 2020.
Ikena filed with the SEC on March 5, 2021. It priced its shares at $16 on March 25. The deal offered 7.8 million shares for a deal size of $125 million. The IPO gave Ikena a market cap of $606 million.
You can look at Ikena’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 100%
Edgewise Therapeutics (Nasdaq: EWTX)
Edgewise Therapeutics goal is to create the world’s leading precision medicine company for muscle disorders. It specializes in muscle biology and biophysics. Its platform uses systems to identify key proteins in muscle tissue. This lets Edgewise create therapies designed to target specific muscles. The company’s leading product is in a Phase 1 clinical trial.
Edgewise doesn’t have revenue. It lists that as one of the top risk factors in its prospectus. So, it’s not surprising Edgewise has increasing net loss. In 2019, operating expenses were $9.9 million. And net loss was $9.7 million after interest income. For 2020, operating expenses increased to $17.2 million for a total net loss of about $17.1 million. However, Edgewise also had a 343% increase in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet. It went from $23.7 million in 2019 to $104.9 million in 2020.
The company filed on March 5, 2021 and priced on March 25. Edgewise offered 11 million shares at a price of $16 a share, raising $176 million. The IPO gave Edgewise a market cap of $876 million.
You can look at Edgewise Therapeutics’ prospectus here.
First Day Return: 87.5%
Olink Holding (Nasdaq: OLK)
Olink Holding is a biotech company. It focuses on proteomics. According to News Medical…
Proteomics is used to detect protein expression patterns at a given time in response to a specific stimulus, but also to determine functional protein networks that exist at the level of the cell, tissue, or whole organism.
By using proteomics, Olink hopes to provide a platform of products and services to leading biopharmaceutical companies as well as clinical and academic organizations. The company has ten owned subsidiaries across the globe.
During 2019, Olink made an acquisition. As a result, the company provided predecessor, successor and pro forma financial data for the year. We will look at the pro forma data. Olink recorded revenue of $46.3 million in 2019. It had a gross profit of $32 million, but it ended with a net loss of almost $5 million. In 2020, revenue increased 16.8% to %54.1 million. Gross profit also increased to $36.6 million. However, Olink’s net loss also grew, ending 2020 with a $6.8 million loss.
Olink filed to go public on March 3, 2021. It priced on March 24. The company offered 17.65 million shares at a price of $20. The deal raised $353 million for a market cap of nearly $2.4 billion.
You can look at Olink Holding’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 80%
Sun Country Airlines (Nasdaq: SNCY)
Sun Country Airlines is an American airline. The company describes itself as “a new breed of hybrid low-cost air carrier.” Based in Minnesota, the company focuses on leisure travel, such as friends and family visiting each other. It offers flights through the U.S. and to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, companies like Sun Country were hit hard in 2020. And it shows in the finances. For 2019, revenue was $688.8 million. But in 2020, it was cut almost in half to $359.2 million. Sun Country ended 2019 with a net profit of $46 million. In 2020, it ended with a net loss of $3.9 million. However, investors are hopeful that vaccines and quarantine lifts will result in a large demand for travel in 2021 and 2022.
Sun Country filed on February 8, 2021. It priced over a month later on March 16. The company offered shares at a price of $24, above the original range of $21 to $23. The deal included almost 9.1 million shares for a deal size of $218 million. The IPO gave Sun Country a market cap of $1.5 billion.
You can look at Sun Country Airlines’ prospectus here.
First Day Return: 51.6%
Recent IPOs: February
The recent IPO of Chinese communications software provider Cloopen Holdings was the top offering of February 2021.
Cloopen Group Holding (NYSE: RAAS)
Cloopen is a Chinese cloud-based communications provider. In 2019, it was the largest multi-capable solution provider in China by revenue. Cloopen offers a full suite of products, such as communications platform as a service, cloud-based contact centers, and cloud-based communications and collaborations. The company works across a number of industries, from telecommunications and finance to education and energy.
In 2018, Cloopen recorded $77.5 million in revenue with a gross profit of $29.1 million. The next year, the company’s revenue increased 30% to $100.5 million. Gross profit also increased to $41.3 million, a growth of 42%. For the nine months ended September 2020, Cloopen reported increased revenue, going from $65.9 million in 2019 to $78.7 million. That’s a growth of 19.4%. Gross profit also increased. It grew 14.7%, from $27.2 in 2019 to $31.2 million in 2020. However, Cloopen isn’t yet profitable. In 2018, net loss was $24 million. It increased to a loss of $28.4 million in 2019. And for the nine months ended September 2020, net loss was $31.5 million. That’s greater than Cloopen’s net loss of $20 million for the same time period in 2019.***
Cloopen filed on January 21, 2021. The offering was priced at $16 on February 8, 2021. The company offered 20 million shares, for a deal size of $320 million. This gave Cloopen a market cap of $2.35 billion.
You can look at Cloopen Group Holdings’ prospectus here.
First Day Return: 200%
***Financial data calculated according to the RMB to USD conversion rate on March 4, 2021.
Vor Biopharma (Nasdaq: VOR)
Vor is a biotech company. It focuses on developing therapies for hematological (blood) cancers. The company uses cell technology. It claims traditional treatments aren’t effective against tumor targets on healthy cells. As a result, 40% of patients relapse, with less than 20% survival rates for two years. Vor aims to create a single therapy to remove tumor cells from healthy cells.
Vor has no revenue or income. It’s the first thing the company lists as a risk factor:
Since inception, we have not generated any revenue and have incurred significant operating losses. For the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2019, our net loss was $4.2 million and $10.8 million, respectively. Our net loss for the nine months ended September 30, 2020 was $27.7 million. As of September 30, 2020, we had an accumulated deficit of $45.6 million. We have financed our operations primarily through private placements of our preferred stock. We have devoted all of our efforts to organizing and staffing our company, business and scientific planning, raising capital, acquiring and developing technology, identifying potential product candidates, undertaking research and preclinical studies of potential product candidates, developing manufacturing capabilities and evaluating a clinical path for our pipeline programs. We expect to continue to incur significant expenses and increasing operating losses for the foreseeable future.
Vor Biopharma filed to go public on January 15, 2021. The company priced almost 10 million shares on February 4, 2021 at $18 per share. The deal raised about $177 million. This gave Vor a market cap of $711 million.
You can look at Vor Biopharma’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 108.3%
Viant Technology (Nasdaq: DSP)
Viant is an advertising software company. Its main offering is its demand-side platform, Adelphic. According to Viant, its software allows users to plan, buy and measure advertising campaigns. Additionally, the self-service platform offers advanced forecasting and reporting. It also allows users to buy ads on desktop, mobile, TV and digital billboards, to name a few.
Although the company started in 1999, Viant was reorganizing, giving little financial data. The company offers 2019 numbers and 2020 estimates for the year since bookkeeping wasn’t finished at the time of the prospectus. For the year ended 2019, Viant recorded $164.9 million in revenue. It estimates $163 to $165 million for revenue in 2020. In 2019, net income was $9.9 million. Viant estimates a growth of 107% for a projection of $20 to $21 million in net income for 2020.
Viant filed on January 15, 2021. It priced on February 9, 2021. The company offered 10 million shares at $25 per share. Viant raised $250 million for a market cap of $1.6 billion.
You can look at Viant Technology’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 90.9%
Baosheng Media Group Holdings (Nasdaq: BAOS)
Baosheng is a Chinese online marketing service provider for advertisers and media companies. The company advises on online marketing strategies, offers advertising optimization services and helps deploy online ads. It also helps online media companies get advertisers to buy ad space across multiple channels.
In 2018, Baosheng reported revenue of $16.2 million. It grew almost 10% to $17.85 million in 2019. For the six months ended June 30, 2020, Baosheng recorded $9.8 million in revenue. That’s a decrease in revenue from the same time period in 2019 when revenue was close to $11 million. The company is profitable, however. In 2018, net income was $9.2 million. It grew to $11.2 million in 2019 for a growth rate of 21.7%. And for the six months in 2020, net income fell to $6.2 million from $6.8 million the year before.
Baosheng Media filed on July 10, 2020. It priced seven months later on February 8, 2021. The company sold 6 million shares at an offer price of $5. The deal size was $30 million for a market cap of $132 million.
You can look at Baosheng Media Group Holdings’ prospectus here.
First Day Return: 77.2%
Talis Biomedical (Nasdaq: TLIS)
Talis Biomedical develops diagnostic tests for infectious diseases. It aims to commercialize products for accurate, reliable, lost cost and rapid molecular testing. The company is developing the Talis One platform. It’s a cloud-enabled sample-to-answer platform to diagnose at point-of-care. Talis believes that more accurate testing at the point-of-care leads to better and effective treatment and care. The company is also making a COVID-19 test with the hope it will receive an Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA.
Since Talis doesn’t have any products currently available, the company doesn’t have revenue from sales. Instead, the company lists grant revenue on its financial statements. In 2018, Talis received $2.4 million in grant revenue. It increased to nearly $4 million in 2019. For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Talis had $10.7 million in grant revenue. This is a big increase from 2019, when it was $2.5 million. Additionally, the company notes it has recurring losses, citing $21.3 million and $27.5 million for 2018 and 2019, respectively. As of September 30, 2020 Talis had an accumulated deficit of $128.7 million.
Talis filed with the SEC on January 22, 2021. It priced on February 11, 2021 at $16 a share. The deal offered 13.8 million shares for a deal size of $221 million. The IPO gave Talis a market cap of $948 million.
You can look at Talis Biomedical’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 73.8%
Recent IPOs: January
The RLX Technologies IPO was the top recent IPO for January 2021.
RLX Technologies (NYSE: RLX)
RLX Technologies is a Chinese e-vapor company. It claims it was the No. 1 brand in terms of retail sales in 2019, taking 48% of the market share of closed-system e-vapor products. And it was ranked first for brand awareness in a survey conducted by China Insights Consultancy in September 2020. Among users of e-vapor products in China, 67.6% recognized the brand.
RLX’s finances show increasing revenue numbers. In 2018, the company recorded about $20.5 million in revenue. Then RLX saw a huge jump in 2019, with $239.8 million in revenue. That’s an increase of more than 1,000%. For the nine months ended September 30, 2019, RLX reported revenue of $176.3 million. And for the same time period in 2020, net revenue was $340.7 million, a growth rate of 93.3%. Additionally, RLX recorded profit for the year ended 2019 and the nine months ended September 30, 2020. Net income was $7.4 million and $16.8 million, respectively.***
RLX filed to go public on December 31, 2020. The RLX IPO date was January 21, 2021. The company offered 116.5 million shares at an offer price of $12 a share. The deal raised nearly $1.4 billion for a market cap of $18.6 billion.
You can look at RLX Technologies’ prospectus here.
First Day Return: 145.9%
***Financial data calculated according to the RMB to USD conversion rate on February 3, 2021.
Poshmark (Nasdaq: POSH)
Poshmark is an e-commerce website. It was founded in 2011 to make buying and selling “simple, social and fun,” according to the company’s preliminary prospectus. In 2019, the company’s active users spent 27 minutes a day on average browsing Poshmark’s market. The company’s categories include apparel, accessories, footwear, home and beauty. Poshmark claims its technology “enables simple transactions, seamless logistics and an engaging experience at scale.” The company had 31.7 million active users, 6.2 million active buyers and 4.5 million active sellers as of September 30, 2020.
Poshmark’s revenue comes from fees charged to marketplace sellers. In 2018, Poshmark recorded $148.3 million in revenue. That increased to $205.2 million in 2019. a growth rate of 38.4%. For the nine months ended September 30, 2019, Poshmark had $150.5 million in revenue. That increased 28.1% to $192.8 million for the same time period in 2020. However, Poshmark isn’t yet profitable. In 2018, net loss was $14.5 million. And in 2019, that grew to $48.7 million. For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, net loss was $20.9 million.
The company filed to go public on December 17, 2020. The Poshmark IPO date was January 13, 2021. Shares were priced at $42. The offering sold 6.6 million shares, for a deal size of $277 million. Poshmark’s post-IPO market cap is almost $3.5 billion.
You can look at Poshmark’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 141.7%
Qilian International Holding (Nasdaq: QLI)
Qilian is a Chinese pharmaceutical and chemical company. It develops, manufactures, markets and sells its products. Its offerings include licorice products, oxytetracycline products, traditional Chinese medicine and fertilizers.
In 2018, Qilian reported $50.4 million in revenue. In 2019, revenue fell 9.3% to $46.1 million. On March 31, 2019, Qilian had $27.2 million in revenue. For the same time period in 2020, Qilian recorded an increase of 2.2%, reaching $27.8 million in revenue. And Qilian is a profitable company. In addition to recording gross profit, Qilian has net income. In 2018, net income was $5.2 million. That grew 13.5% to $5.9 million in 2019. For the six months ended March 31, 2019, net income totaled $$5 million. That fell to $4.2 million for the six months ended March 31, 2020.
Qilian International filed on November 11, 2019, taking more than a year to complete the IPO process. The Qilian IPO date was January 11, 2021. It offered 5 million shares. The offering was priced at $5 a share, for a total deal size of $25 million. Qilian’s post-IPO market cap is $175 million.
You can look at Qilian International Holding’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 100%
Affirm (Nasdaq: AFRM)
PayPal co-founder Max Levchin founded Affirm with Nathan Gettings, Jeffrey Kaditz and Alex Rampell in 2012. Affirm is a technology company. It provides e-commerce solutions. It allows consumers to make purchases in interest-free installments. Additionally, Affirm has an app to help people manage payments or open high-yield savings accounts.
On the one hand, the company has revenue growth. In 2019, net revenue was $264.4 million. For the year ending June 30, 2020, revenue grew 92.7% to $509.5 million. And the trend continued for the three months ending September 30. In 2019, revenue was $87.9 million for this time period. But in 2020, that increased to $174 million, a growth rate of 98%. On the other hand, Affirm isn’t yet profitable. Affirm had a net loss of $120.5 million in 2019. However, the company decreased its net loss to $112.6 million in 2020. And for the three months ended September 30, net loss decreased from $30.8 million in 2019 to $15.3 million in 2020.
Affirm filed on November 18, 2020. The Affirm IPO date was January 12, 2021. It offered 24.6 million shares at $49 a share, up from its original price range of $41 to $44. The total deal size was $1.2 billion, giving Affirm a market cap of almost $14.8 billion.
You can look at Affirm’s prospectus here.
First Day Return: 98.4%
Motorsport Games (Nasdaq: MSGM)
Motorsport Games is a racing game developer, publisher and esports system provider. The company works on games for sports such NASCAR, plus the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race and its associate, the FIA World Endurance Championship. Motorsport Games strives to deliver high-quality and innovative experiences for racers, gamers and fans of all age groups. It is the official developer and publisher of the NASCAR video game racing franchise. NASCAR reached about 475 million homes in 2019 and is only part of the company’s market.
In 2018, Motorsport reported $14.8 million in revenue. This dropped to $11.85 million in 2019. But for the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Motorsport had $16.1 million in revenue. This was a 67.7% increase from the same time period in 2019, when revenue was $9.6 million. However, Motorsport doesn’t have steady profitability yet. For the year ended December 31, 2018, Motorsport’s net loss was $2.6 million. That increased in 2019 to net loss of $3.6 million. And for the nine months ended September 2019, net loss was $2.9 million. However, for the first nine months of 2020, Motorsport recorded net income of more than $875,000.
Motorsport filed on December 18, 2020. The Motorsport Games IPO date was January 12, 2021. The company offered a total of 3 million shares. Priced at the high end of its expected range, shares sold for $20 apiece, for a deal size of $60 million. Motorsport Games market cap is $346 million.
You can look at Motorsport Games’ prospectus here.
First Day Return: 75%
If you’re looking for investment opportunities, Investment U is the place to be. Check out our IPO calendar to stay up to date on upcoming IPO opportunities. And don’t forget to sign up for our free e-letter below! It’s full of useful tips and research from our experts. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced investor, there’s something for everyone.
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>>> Atai Life Sciences Announces Pricing of Upsized Initial Public Offering
Yahoo Finance
Atai LIFE SCIENCES
June 17, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/atai-life-sciences-announces-pricing-032100058.html
BERLIN, June 17, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- atai Life Sciences B.V. (Nasdaq: ATAI) (“atai”), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company aiming to transform the treatment of mental health disorders, today announced the pricing of its upsized initial public offering in the United States of 15,000,000 common shares at a price to the public of $15.00 per share. All common shares are being offered by atai. The gross proceeds of the offering, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and other offering expenses payable by atai, are expected to be $225.0 million. In addition, atai has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 2,250,000 common shares at the initial public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions. The offering is expected to close on June 22, 2021, subject to customary closing conditions.
atai’s common shares are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Market on June 18, 2021 under the ticker symbol “ATAI.”
Credit Suisse, Citigroup, Cowen, and Berenberg are acting as book-running managers for the proposed offering. Cantor, RBC Capital Markets and Canaccord Genuity are also acting as book-running managers for the proposed offering.
This offering is being made only by means of a prospectus. Copies of the final prospectus relating to this offering may be obtained, when available, by contacting: Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 6933 Louis Stephens Drive, Morrisville, NC 27560, or by telephone at (800) 221-1037 or by email at usa.prospectus@credit-suisse.com; Citigroup Global Markets Inc., c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, or by telephone at (800) 831-9146 or by email at prospectus@citi.com; Cowen and Company, LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, New York 11717, Attention: Prospectus Department, or by telephone at (833) 297-2926, or by email at
PostSaleManualRequests@broadridge.com; or, Berenberg Capital Markets LLC, Attention: Investment Banking, 1251 Avenue of the Americas, 53rd Floor, New York, New York 10020, or by telephone at +1 (646) 949-9000, or by e-mail at prospectusrequests@berenberg-us.com.
A registration statement relating to the securities being sold in the offering has been declared effective by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) on June 17, 2021. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of such state or jurisdiction.
About atai Life Sciences
atai is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company aiming to transform the treatment of mental health disorders. atai was founded in 2018 as a response to the significant unmet need and lack of innovation in the mental health treatment landscape, as well as the emergence of therapies that previously may have been overlooked or underused, including psychedelic compounds and digital therapeutics. atai is headquartered in Berlin, with offices in New York and London.
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>>> Here’s Which VC-Backed Companies Are Going Public Via SPAC This Year (So Far)
Crunch Base
Sophia Kunthara
July 30, 2021
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/heres-which-vc-backed-companies-are-going-public-via-spac-this-year-so-far/
Going public through a special-purpose acquisition company is officially mainstream. Special-purpose acquisition companies, once looked down upon by Wall Street-types as a less respectable way to go public, have been forming and going public at an unprecedented pace this year.
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While last year was considered a record year for SPACs, this year has already shattered 2020’s record.
And in the past year, the companies going public are no longer the under-the-radar types. Well-capitalized companies with brand-name recognition, like genetic testing company 23AndMe and online real estate buying platform Opendoor, are among the companies that have gone public or announced their intent to go public through a SPAC.
Here at Crunchbase News, we keep a running list of the companies that have gone public this year. In the past, it’s mostly been comprised of IPOs, although there have been direct listings here and there. This year, we began keeping track of SPACs that completed their mergers and started trading.
With SPACs forming and going public every day, it seemed wise to keep track of the companies that had announced they agreed to go public via SPAC as well: The announced SPAC targets, if you will. So, we scoured news reports and press releases and compiled a list of the venture-backed companies that have announced they will be merging with a SPAC. Companies that have been reported to be in talks to go public via SPAC aren’t included in the list.
This article was last updated on July 30, 2021.
SoFi
Date Announced: Jan. 7, 2021
Acquirer: Social Capital Hedosophia Corp. V
Valuation: $8.65 billion, per CNBC
Some Investors: Third Point Ventures, SoftBank
Achronix Semiconductor
Date Announced: Jan. 9, 2021
Acquirer: Ace Convergence Acquisition
Valuation: $2 billion, per Bloomberg
Some Investors: Battery Ventures, New Science Ventures
Bakkt
Date Announced: Jan. 11, 2021
Acquirer: VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings
Valuation: $2.1 billion
Some Investors: Goldfinch Partners, M12
Proterra
Date Announced: Jan. 12, 2021
Acquirer: ArcLight Clean Transition Corp.
Valuation: $1.6 billion
Some Investors: Tao Capital Partners, Daimler
Talkspace
Date Announced: Jan. 13, 2021
Acquirer: Hudson Executive Investment Corp.
Valuation: $1.4 billion
Some Investors: Spark Capital, Norwest Venture Partners
LiveVox
Date Announced: Jan. 14, 2021
Acquirer: Crescent Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $840 million
Some Investors: Lunsford Capital, R&D Bauer Ventures
EVGo
Date Announced: Jan. 22, 2021
Acquirer: Climate Change Crisis Real Impact I Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $2.6 billion
Some Investors: Vision Ridge Capital Partners
Latch
Date Announced: Jan. 25, 2021
Acquirer: TS Innovations Acquisitions Corp.
Valuation: $1.56 billion
Some Investors: Lux Capital, RRE Ventures
Taboola
Date Announced: Jan. 25, 2021
Acquirer: ION Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $2.6 billion
Some Investors: Evergreen Venture Partners, Pitango Venture Capital
Nerdy
Date Announced: Jan. 29, 2021
Acquirer: TPG Pace Tech Opportunities
Valuation: $1.7 billion
Some Investors: TCV, Learn Capital
Playstudios
Date Announced: Feb. 1, 2021
Acquirer: Acies Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $1.1 billion
Some Investors: Jafco Ventures
Otonomo
Date Announced: Feb. 1, 2021
Acquirer: Software Acquisition Group Inc. II
Valuation: $1.4 billion
Some Investors: Bessemer Venture Partners, SK Holdings
Microvast
Date Announced: Feb. 1, 2021
Acquirer: Tuscan Holdings Corp.
Valuation: $3 billion
Some Investors: IFC Venture Capital Group, CITIC Securities
Wheels Up
Date Announced: Feb. 1, 2021
Acquirer: Aspirational Consumer Lifestyle Corp.
Valuation: $2.1 billion
Some Investors: Blue Ivy Ventures, Alpaca VC
Astra
Date Announced: Feb. 2, 2021
Acquirer: Holicity Inc.
Valuation: $2.1 billion
Some Investors: ACME Capital, Airbus Ventures
Payoneer
Date Announced: Feb. 3, 2021
Acquirer: FTAC Olympus Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $3.3 billion
Some Investors: TCV, Viola Ventures
Vintage Wine Estates
Date Announced: Feb. 4, 2021
Acquirer: Bespoke Capital Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $690 million
Some Investors: AGR Partners
23AndMe
Date Announced: Feb. 4, 2021
Acquirer: VG Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $3.5 billion
Some Investors: Sequoia Capital, NextView Capital
Hyzon Motors
Date Announced: Feb. 9, 2021
Acquirer: Decarbonization Plus Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $2.1 billion
Some Investors: Total Carbon Neutrality Ventures
Matterport
Date Announced: Feb. 11, 2021
Acquirer: Gores Holdings VI
Valuation: $2.9 billion
Some Investors: DCM Ventures, Lux Capital
Rover
Date Announced: Feb. 11, 2021
Acquirer: Nebula Caravel Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $1.35 billion
Some Investors: Menlo Ventures, Spark Capital
Sharecare
Date Announced: Feb. 12, 2021
Acquirer: Falcon Capital Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $3.9 billion
Some Investors: Heritage Group, Aflac Corporate Ventures
Owlet Baby Care
Date Announced: Feb. 16, 2021
Acquirer: Sandbridge Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $1 billion
Some Investors: Eclipse Ventures, Formation 8
AEye
Date Announced: Feb. 17, 2021
Acquirer: CF Finance Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $2 billion
Some Investors: BootstrapLabs, Taiwania Capital
Xos
Date Announced: Feb. 22, 2021
Acquirer: NextGen Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $2 billion
Some Investors: Build Capital Group, Proeza Ventures
Enovix
Date Announced: Feb. 22, 2021
Acquirer: Rodgers Silicon Valley Acquisition Corp
Valuation: $1.1 billion
Some Investors: T.J. Rodgers, Emmanuel Hernandez
Lucid Motors
Date Announced: Feb. 22, 2021
Acquirer: Churchill Capital Corp. IV
Valuation: $11.75 billion
Some Investors: Venrock, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund
Berkshire Grey
Date Announced: Feb. 24, 2021
Acquirer: Revolution Acceleration Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $2.7 billion
Some Investors: Khosla Ventures, SoftBank
Joby Aviation
Date Announced: Feb. 24, 2021
Acquirer: Reinvent Technology Partners
Valuation: $6.6 billion
Some Investors: Intel Capital, Capricorn Investment Group
Rocket Lab
Date Announced: March 1, 2021
Acquirer: Vector Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $4.1 billion
Some Investors: Khosla Ventures, DCVC
QOMPLX
Date Announced: March 1, 2021
Acquirer: Tailwind Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $1.4 billion
Some Investors: Exponential Partners, Motive Partners
Doma
Date Announced: March 2, 2021
Acquirer: Capital Investment Corp. V
Valuation: $3 billion
Some Investors: Foundation Capital, Greenspring Associates
Hippo Insurance
Date Announced: March 4, 2021
Acquirer: Reinvent Technology Partners Z
Valuation: $5 billion
Some Investors: Comcast Ventures, Felicis Ventures
IonQ
Date Announced: March 8, 2021
Acquirer: dMY Technology Group Inc. III
Valuation: $2 billion
Some Investors: GV, New Enterprise Associates
Evolv Technology
Date Announced: March 8, 2021
Acquirer: NewHold Investment Corp.
Valuation: $1.25 billion
Some Investors: Stanley Ventures, Lux Capital
Ambulnz (dba DocGo)
Date Announced: March 9, 2021
Acquirer: Motion Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $1.1 billion
Some Investors: N/A.
IronNet
Date Announced: March 15, 2021
Acquirer: LGL Systems Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $1.2 billion
Some Investors: ForgePoint Capital, C5 Capital
Offerpad
Date Announced: March 18, 2021
Acquirer: Supernova Partners Acquisition Co.
Valuation: $3 billion
Some Investors: LL Funds
Rockley Photonics
Date Announced: March 19, 2021
Acquirer: SC Health Corp.
Valuation: $1.2 billion
Some Investors: Kreos Capital, Morningside Venture Investments
IronSource
Date Announced: March 21, 2021
Acquirer: Thoma Bravo Advantage
Valuation: $11.1 billion
Some Investors: Viola Ventures, Access Industries
Velo3D
Date Announced: March 23, 2021
Acquirer: JAWS Spitfire Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $1.6 billion
Some Investors: Khosla Ventures, Piva Capital
WeWork
Date Announced: March 26, 2021
Acquirer: BowX Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $9 billion
Some Investors: SoftBank Vision Fund, Hony Capital
SomaLogic
Date Announced: March 29, 2021
Acquirer: CM Life Sciences II
Valuation: $1.23 billion
Some Investors: Foresite Capital, Fiscus Ventures
Cazoo
Date Announced: March 29, 2021
Acquirer: AJAX I
Valuation: $7 billion
Some Investors: Stride.VC, General Catalyst
Lilium
Date Announced: March 30, 2021
Acquirer: Qell Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $3.3 billion
Some Investors: Tencent Holdings, Freigeist Capital
BetterTherapeutics
Date Announced: April 7, 2021
Acquirer: Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp. II
Valuation: $187 million
Some Investors: Not available.
Tango Therapeutics
Date Announced: April 14, 2021
Acquirer: BCTG Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $353 million
Some Investors: Casdin Capital, Boxer Capital
Vicarious Surgical
Date Announced: April 15
Acquirer: D8 Holdings Corp.
Valuation: $1.1 billion
Some Investors: Khosla Ventures, Gates Frontier Fund
SmartRent
Date Announced: April 22, 2021
Acquirer: Fifth Wall Acquisition Corp. I
Valuation: $2.2 billion
Some Investors: Spark Capital, Fifth Wall
Enjoy Technology
Date Announced: April 28, 2021
Acquirer: Marquee Raine Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $1.2 billion
Some Investors: L Catterton, Highland Capital Partners
ShapeWays
Date Announced: April 28, 2021
Acquirer: Galileo Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $410 million
Some Investors: Lux Capital, Andreessen Horowitz
Sonder
Date Announced: April 30, 2021
Acquirer: Gores Metropoulos II Inc.
Valuation: $2.2 billion
Some Investors: Greylock, Spark Capital
Jasper Therapeutics
Date Announced: May 6, 2021
Acquirer: Amplitude Healthcare Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: N/A
Some Investors: Roche Venture Fund, Qiming Venture Partners USA
Science 37
Date Announced: May 7, 2021
Acquirer: LifeSci Acquisition II Corp.
Valuation: $1.05 billion
Some Investors: Lux Capital, Redmile Group
Benson Hill
Date Announced: May 10, 2021
Acquirer: Star Peak Corp. II
Valuation: $2 billion
Some Investors: GV, Lewis & Clark Ventures
Plus
Date Announced: May 10, 2021
Acquirer: Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $3.3 billion
Some Investors: Sequoia Capital China, ClearVUE Partners
Better.com
Date Announced: May 11, 2021
Acquirer: Aurora Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $7.7 billion
Some Investors: SoftBank, L Catterton
Ginkgo Bioworks
Date Announced: May 11, 2021
Acquirer: Soaring Eagle Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $17.5 billion
Some Investors: DCVC, Viking Global Investors
Bird
Date Announced: May 12, 2021
Acquirer: Switchback II
Valuation: $2.3 billion
Some Investors: Sequoia Capital, Craft Ventures
Bright Machines
Date Announced: May 17, 2021
Acquirer: SCVX
Valuation: $1.1 billion
Some Investors: Eclipse Ventures, Lux Capital
Jam City
Date Announced: May 20, 2021
Acquirer: DPCM Capital
Valuation: $1.1 billion
Some Investors: Austin Ventures, Netmarble
Tritium
Date Announced: May 26, 2021
Acquirer: Soaring Eagle Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $1.2 billion
Some Investors: Brian Flannery, Gilbarco Veeder Root
Acorns
Date Announced: May 27, 2021
Acquirer: Pioneer Merger Corp.
Valuation: $2.2 billion
Some Investors: Greycroft, PayPal Ventures
Wejo
Date Announced: May 28, 2021
Acquirer: Virtuoso Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $1.1 billion
Some Investors: General Motors, DIP Capital
Babylon Health
Date Announced: June 3, 2021
Acquirer: Alkuri Global Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $3.6 billion
Some Investors: Hoxton Ventures, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund
Dave
Date Announced: June 7, 2021
Acquirer: VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings III
Valuation: $4 billion
Some Investors: Norwest Venture Partners, Victory Park Capital
NextNav
Date Announced: June 10, 2021
Acquirer: Spartacus Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $1.2 billion
Some Investors: New Enterprise Associates, Fortress Investment Group
Vertical Aerospace
Date Announced: June 10
Acquirer: Broadstone Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $2.2 billion
Some Investors: N/A
Boxed
Date Announced: June 14
Acquirer: Seven Oaks Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $887 million
Some Investors: Greycroft, DST Global
Pear Therapeutics
Date Announced: June 22, 2021
Acquirer: Thimble Point Acquisition
Valuation: $1.6 billion
Some Investors: Temasek Holdings, SoftBank Vision Fund
Quanergy Systems
Date Announced: June 22, 2021
Acquirer: CITIC Capital Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $1.1 billion
Some Investors: Motus Ventures, Rising Tide
Embark
Date Announced: June 23, 2021
Acquirer: Northern Genesis Acquisition Corp. II
Valuation: $5.2 billion
Some Investors: Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital
BuzzFeed
Date Announced: June 24, 2021
Acquirer: 890 Fifth Avenue Partners, Inc.
Valuation: $1.5 billion
Some Investors: Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates
NextDoor
Date Announced: Jul 6, 2021
Acquirer: Khosla Ventures Acquisition Co. II
Valuation: $4.3 billion
Some Investors: Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins
Satellogic
Date Announced: July 6, 2021
Acquirer: CF Acquisition Corp. V
Valuation: $1.1 billion
Some Investors: Tencent, Valor Capital Group
Circle
Date Announced: July 8, 2021
Acquirer: Concord Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $4.5 billion
Some Investors: IDG Capital, Breyer Capital
Planet
Date Announced: July 7, 2021
Acquirer: dMY Technology Group Inc. IV
Valuation: $2.8 billion
Some Investors: DCVC, Prelude Ventures
Aurora
Date Announced: July 15, 2021
Acquirer: Reinvent Technology Partners
Valuation: $11 billion
Some Investors: Sequoia Capital, Greylock
HeartFlow
Date Announced: July 15, 2021
Acquirer: Longview Acquisition Corp. II
Valuation: $2.4 billion
Some Investors: Capricorn Investment Group, Panorama Point Partners
ServiceMax
Date Announced: July 15, 2021
Acquirer: Pathfinder Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $1.4 billion
Some Investors: Emergence, Silver Lake
Kin Insurance
Date Announced: July 19, 2021
Acquirer: Omnichannel Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $1.03 billion
Some Investors: August Capital, Commerce Ventures
AdTheorent
Date Announced: July 27, 2021
Acquirer: MCAP Acquisition Corp.
Valuation: $775 million
Some Investors: Verizon Ventures, H.I.G. Growth Partners
SWVL Technologies
Date Announced: July 28, 2021
Acquirer: Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital
Valuation: $1.5 billion
Some Investors: Careem, BECO Capital
Vacasa
Date Announced: July 29, 2021
Acquirer: TPG Pace Solutions
Valuation: $4.5 billion
Some Investors: Riverwood Capital, Silver Lake
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>>> Palantir Invests in More SPAC Companies, and Buys $51 Million in Gold Bars
Barron's
By Eric J. Savitz
Aug. 16, 2021
https://www.barrons.com/articles/palantir-spac-investment-gold-bars-51629150154
Data-analytics-software firm Palantir disclosed more investments in firms going public through special-purpose acquisition companies, and a large stash of gold bars.
Palantir Technologies has expanded its portfolio of investments in companies going public via SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, to well over $300 million.
As previously reported, Palantir (ticker: PLTR) has started a program of investing in the young companies in return for multi-year commitments to use the company’s software.
In its June quarter financial filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Palantir disclosed $250 million in commitments to a group of 10 companies through June 30. That includes eight identified by name, all previously announced — Lilium, Sarcos Robotics, Roivant Sciences, Celularity (CELU), Wejo, Babylon Health, Boxed, Pear Therapeutics — and two others described only as “mobility company” and “autonomous vehicle company.” Palantir said it has commercial contracts with that group of companies with a potential value of $428 million. All of those transactions were signed in the period from March 30 to June 22, and to date, none have been completed, the filing shows.
A provider of data-analytics software for both commercial and government customers, Palantir also said that since June 30, it has committed an additional $60 million in new investments, including: $20 million for Fast Radius, which offers a “cloud manufacturing platform”; $15 million for Tritium, a developer of electric vehicle chargers; $15 million for AdTheorent, which sells machine-learning driven advertising software; and $10 million for FinAccel, an Asian financial-services company with offices in Singapore and Jakarta.
Palantir also disclosed it has completed equity investments of $25 million in an “electric vehicle company,” $3 million in an “autonomous aerial vehicle company,” and $5 million in Astrocast, which operates a network of nanosatellites. That brings the total investment commitment to more than $330 million.
Palantir also disclosed that it purchased $50.7 million in 100-ounce gold bars. “Such purchase will initially be kept in a secure third-party facility located in the northeastern United States and the company is able to take physical possession of the gold bars stored at the facility at any time with reasonable notice,” Palantir said in the filing.
The company did not provide a reason for the gold purchase.
As of June 30, Palantir had about $2.4 billion in cash.
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Singular Genomics Systems - >>> Buy These 3 New Stocks Before They Jump Over 40%, Says Goldman Sachs
Yahoo Finance
June 22, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/buy-3-stocks-jump-over-141651264.html
Singular Genomics Systems (OMIC)
Last but not least is Singular Genomics, a life sciences company working on next generation sequencing (NGS) and multiomics technologies, the tools that will build the next wave of genetically-based products and medicines. The company has a proprietary sequencing platform, and brings to the table an integrated solution it calls PX. The PX integrated solution makes use of genomics, cell analysis, spatial analysis, and proteomics on an integrated instrument.
The PX Integrated Solution is one of Singular Genomics’ pipeline products, and is scheduled for commercial release in 2023. The company is also working on the G4 Instrument, a benchtop next gen sequencer optimized for fast and accurate results in genetic sequencing tests. The G4 Instrument is packaged with a menu of consumable kits. The project is on track for early access and a commercial launch by the end of this year, with the first units shipping to customers in 1H21.
Singular Genomics held its IPO to raise capital – and it did so successfully. The initial pricing was $22 per share for 10.2 million shares put on the market. As is usually done, the underwriters had an option on additional shares, 1.53 million in this case, at the same price. Singular Genomics is expected to generate pre-expense funds of $224.4 million. They beat that number. The IPO officially brought in $258.1 million, before deductions. The stock shares started on the market on May 27, and the IPO closed on June 1.
Analyst Matthew Sykes, in his report on this stock for Goldman Sachs, points out several factors that indicate strong growth ahead:
“1) Differentiated technology: The OMIC Sequencing Engine incorporates a number of innovations providing a competitive advantage to the incumbent instruments. We see the primary differentiation in the sequencing chemistry OMIC has developed resulting in better performance across a number of metrics relative to the current competition.
“2) Better performance: In internal and external testing environments the G4 has shown to have a performance advantage in cycle time and data output as compared to the incumbent technologies…
“3) Attractive market opportunity: The global NGS market is estimated to grow at a 19% CAGR reaching $18.6bn by 2026... We believe OMIC has a significant opportunity to address the need for an alternate supplier and for additional sequencing capacity in the market.”
Based on the above, Sykes gives OMIC shares a Buy rating to start out with, while his $35 one-year price target implies ~49% upside from current levels. (To watch Sykes’ track record, click here)
Overall, OMIC has picked up 4 reviews in its short time on the market, and they break down 3 to 1 in favor of Buy versus Hold – for a Strong Buy consensus rating. The shares are priced at $23.16 and the average price target of $30.33 implies an upside of ~29% for the coming 12 months.
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Paymentus, Flywire - >>> Buy These 3 New Stocks Before They Jump Over 40%, Says Goldman Sachs
Yahoo Finance
June 22, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/buy-3-stocks-jump-over-141651264.html
The IPO activity this year continues a heavy momentum built up last year – when despite the corona crisis and the economic dislocations, the market saw record breaking IPO activity, with 407 new public offerings. It’s an example of the stock market’s dynamism, and the confidence of both company managers and investors that stocks are the place to find returns.
This brings us to Goldman Sachs. The banking firm’s stock analysts have been looking for the equities primed to gain in current conditions. And just this week, they’ve tapped three stocks new to the public markets as likely to jump 40% or more in coming months – a solid return that investors should note. We ran them through TipRanks database to see what other Wall Street’s analysts have to say about them.
Paymentus Holdings (PAY)
We’ll start with Paymentus Holdings, a cloud-computing service in the online bill payment niche. The company offers a platform that is widely used in North America – boasting tens of millions of customers, more than 1,300 business clients on the billing end, and nearly 200 million payment transactions last year.
Paymentus provides payment services for billers across a wide range of industries, including utilities, insurance, telecom, healthcare, and government. The company’s IPN, or instant payment network, links the platform to business partners, and allows consumers to handle their bills through a greater range of options: Amazon’s Alex; the PayPal app, in person at Walmart, or even through online banking.
With the growing share of online billing in the world of commerce, Paymentus had to consider upping its profile - and an IPO was a natural move. IPOs by their nature both increase a company’s public visibility and bring in new capital for expansion. Paymentus priced its initial offering at $21 per share, put 10 million shares on the market, and gave the underwriters an option on an additional 1.5 million shares. In the actual event, on May 26, the company sold the offered shares – and easily raised the initially estimated $210 million.
Among the bulls is Goldman Sachs analyst Matthew O’Neill, who is impressed by Paymentus’ application of modern cloud software organization to the complex business of consumer bill-paying.
“Paymentus believes that it has a best-in-class product and can take share from legacy software and processes for billers. Paymentus currently has penetrated less than 1% of the $4.6tn U.S. Bill Payment TAM. We expect Paymentus to gain further share in this market through its tech stack, particularly with its Paypal/Venmo integration and other attractive features for its clients," O’Neill noted.
The analyst added, “Paymentus currently operates across non-discretionary verticals, but there is an opportunity for it to expand into new channels and verticals where there are consistent recurring payments for essential services. The company believes that its modern configurable tech solutions allow it to cost-effectively expand its offerings.”
In line with these comments, O’Neill rates PAY a Buy along with a $54 price target, suggesting ~64% upside potential for the year ahead. (To watch O’Neill’s track record, click here)
Overall, PAY has received 8 recent analyst reviews, breaking down to 6 Buys versus 2 Holds and making the analyst consensus rating a Strong Buy. The stock has current trading price of $32.35 and an average price target of $31.22, indicating ~14% upside potential for the next 12 months. (See PAY stock analysis on TipRanks)
Flywire Corporation (FLYW)
Let’s stick with online payments. Flywire got its start as an online payment service specializing in the educational industry, but it has since branched out to the healthcare and travel sectors, as well. The company’s payment platform offers secure processing for customers around the world, offering both improved collections and localized payment options. The Boston-based company operates on a truly global scale, with over 2,250 client businesses who operate in 240 countries and 130 different currencies.
Flywire moved into the public arena on May 26, in an IPO that saw 10.44 million shares go on the market. The underwriters of the offering had an option on an additional 1.566 million shares. The new stock started trading on the NASDAQ, and the company’s initial pricing put it at $24 per share. The share sale brought in over $366 million on the first day, well above the $250 million the company was aiming for.
"We see opportunity for Flywire to expand within its existing education and healthcare verticals, which have large TAMs. Currently, Flywire has penetrated less than 15% of the cross-border tuition market, and with the addition of domestic payments processing, we believe there is ample runway in education. Flywire is also active in healthcare and travel, with additional opportunity in B2B payments," O’Neill opined.
The analyst added, "We expect Flywire to continue to grow within its verticals due to its software-driven strategy, which strengthens its competitive moat in cross-border payments by delivering convenience and ease of use to clients and their customers."
This company, while new to the public markets, has already made its mark with Wall Street’s analysts – they’ve given FLYW shares a unanimous Strong Buy consensus, based on 9 positive reviews set since the IPO. The shares are priced at $35.52 and the $42.63 average price target indicates room for ~20% share price growth this year. (See FLYW stock analysis on TipRanks)
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>>> First Look: Solid Power, a Ford-Backed QuantumScape Rival, Will Go Public via SPAC
This is more than just another electric vehicle SPAC deal.
Motley Fool
by John Rosevear
Jun 15, 2021
Solid Power, a promising solid-state battery start-up backed by Ford Motor (NYSE:F) and BMW (OTC:BMWYY) (OTC:BAMXF), said that it has agreed to go public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Decarbonization Plus Acquisition III (NASDAQ:DCRC).
The deal values the combined company at about $1.2 billion.
Many investors have been overwhelmed by the number of SPAC deals in the electric-vehicle space over the last year, and some have soured on the space now that a couple of last year's darlings have turned out to be, well, less than they seemed. But if you still believe that electric vehicles are the future (I do), Solid Power is worth a close look. It's a company with real potential, with some big customers ready and waiting for its products, and with technology that's much closer to mass production than that of its most prominent rivals.
What is Solid Power
Colorado-based Solid Power, founded in 2012, is one of several companies working to develop so-called solid-state batteries, which omit the liquid electrolyte used in the lithium-ion batteries that power most electric vehicles today. (Among the others: QuantumScape (NYSE:QS), which drew lots of attention from investors after it went public via its own SPAC deal late last year.)
Solid-state batteries have the potential to offer greater energy density than lithium-ion batteries with less weight, but a design that can be mass-produced at a reasonable cost has eluded researchers for years.
That may soon change.
What makes this a big deal
First and foremost, Solid Power appears to be closer to mass production than its rivals. Most solid-state battery efforts are at least a few years away from production. QuantumScape, for example, is hoping to begin pilot production of its batteries in about three years. But Solid Power is already producing its second-generation 20 ampere-hour (Ah) battery cells on a pilot production line, and it expects to begin pilot production of its full-scale 100 Ah batteries next year.
Second -- again, unlike most competitors -- Solid Power's solid-state battery cells can be manufactured with equipment and processes adapted from lithium-ion battery manufacturing, meaning that existing battery plants can be converted to build Solid Power's cells at relatively low cost.
Finally, as I mentioned above, both Ford and BMW are investors in Solid Power. Both participated in the company's most recent funding round earlier this year, both expect to receive batches of those 100 Ah cells for testing in their own electric vehicles next year, and assuming those tests go well, both will be early customers for the company's mass-produced cells.
What are the terms of the Solid Power SPAC deal
Solid Power's deal to merge with Decarbonization Plus III follows the pattern of other SPAC deals we've seen in the electric vehicle space over the past year, in that it includes a PIPE (for "private investment in public equity") that allows big investors to buy stock in the merged company at an agreed-upon price, adding extra cash to the deal.
Here are the key points of the deal:
Decarbonization Plus III is contributing the cash it holds in trust, about $350 million.
The PIPE will bring another $165 million from investors including Riverstone Energy, Koch Strategic Platforms, and funds advised by Neuberger Berman and VanEck Global.
Together with the $135 million that Solid Power raised in its Series B round last month, the post-merger company will have about $650 million in cash.
The merged company will retain the Solid Power name and will trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker symbol "SLDP."
The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2021.
What are the risks if I buy DCRC now
As with any SPAC deal involving a company that hasn't yet brought its product to market, there are risks investors should keep in mind:
It's possible that the deal won't close, or that it'll close later than scheduled.
It's possible that the company's technology won't pan out, or that it goes into production later than expected. Investors who are used to tech start-up time frames should note that the pace of progress in the battery space is glacial by comparison. Solid Power has been working on its batteries since 2012, QuantumScape since 2010.
It's possible that one or more competitors will beat Solid Power to market, taking significant share.
It's possible that we'll learn things about Solid Power that make it a less attractive investment. (I have no reason to think this will happen, but all SPAC investors should be mindful of the examples of Nikola and Lordstown Motors, both of which made important claims that were later found to have been exaggerated.)
FORD'S ELECTRIC F-150 LIGHTNING WILL USE CELLS DEVELOPED WITH KOREAN BATTERY MAKER SK INNOVATIONS. BUT THE NEXT GENERATION OF THE TRUCK, EXPECTED LATER THIS DECADE, MIGHT WELL USE SOLID POWER'S CELLS.
Is DCRC a buy
I'm not sure yet, but right now I'm leaning toward "yes." Solid Power's technology is very promising, and executives at Ford think highly of the company's technology and leadership team. As with any battery start-up, the question is when (and whether) the company can bring its batteries to market -- but I think Solid Power will still have good growth potential even if production slips by a year or two.
That said, I'm still working through all of the company's investor materials, and I expect to have more thoughts on Solid Power's valuation and growth potential in a few days. Stay tuned.
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>>> Payoneer empowers global commerce by connecting businesses, professionals, countries and currencies with its innovative cross-border payments platform. In today's borderless digital world, Payoneer enables millions of businesses and professionals from more than 200 countries to reach new audiences by facilitating seamless, cross-borderpayments. Additionally, thousands of leading corporations including Google, Airbnb, Elance-oDesk and Getty Images rely on Payoneer's mass payout services.
With Payoneer's fast, flexible, secure and low-cost solutions, businesses and professionals in both developed and emerging markets can now pay and get paid globally as easily as they do locally. Founded in 2005 and based in New York, Payoneer is venture-backed, profitable and ranked in the top 100 of Inc. 5000's Financial Services companies.
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>>> Stock Market’s Million Little Dramas Come Down to a Supply Glut
Bloomberg
By Katherine Greifeld
May 22, 2021
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-22/stock-market-s-million-little-dramas-come-down-to-a-supply-glut?srnd=premium
Over $170 billion raised in IPOs on U.S. exchanges this year
Recent launches trail the broader market after a banner 2020
Angst has been the stock market story of late. It soars, it plunges, and all the while investors fret over sky high valuations and pour over data to figure out when inflation will bring the house of cards crashing down. But sometimes, like now, the problem is far simpler than that: too much supply and not enough demand.
Companies have raised over $170 billion through initial public offerings on U.S. exchanges in 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. IPOs are so hot they’re on track to top last year’s $180 billion haul, the most since at least the 2008 financial crisis.
But while the market voraciously consumed 2020’s debuts, tastes are changing. The Renaissance IPO ETF (ticker IPO), which tracks newly public companies, is down 9.3% this year after soaring 107% in 2020. While the broader market has held up so far, there’s an ever-present threat of a seemingly endless equity supply overwhelming precious demand. Yes, the S&P 500 is up nearly 10% higher year-to-date. But it’s dropped almost 2% from the all-time high it reached earlier this month.
“There is certainly something to the idea that demand for stocks is moderating,” said Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research. “The IPO window is always wide open until it shuts with a bang. That makes it something of a self-correcting part of the market.”
Newly public companies have trailed broader market
Fund flows reflect this waning appetite. While equity exchange-traded funds have taken in $288 billion year-to-date, the biggest -- the $355 billion SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (ticker SPY) -- has shed $12.5 billion.
Even with IPOs coming at a record pace, recent tremors in the stock market tremors are starting to spook some potential issuers. At least two planned listings have been delayed this month because of the volatility. Should that become a trend, or if debuts start getting canceled outright, it would be a troubling sign, Colas said.
“When deals start getting pulled, you’ll know the supply side of the stock market equation is starting to reset,” Colas said.
The bulk of IPO supply is coming from a boom in special purpose acquisition companies. Blank-check listings account for more more than half of this year’s market, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Shares of blank-check firms are sinking
But SPACs have struggled in recent weeks. The IPOX SPAC Index (ticker SPAC), which tracks the performance of a broad group of blank-check firms, has plunged nearly 23% from its mid-February peak.
Beyond the supply-demand imbalance, there’s also a problem with the kinds of companies that are making their market debuts. Many of the recent IPOs have been tech outfits with shaky fundamentals, according to Kim Forrest, chief investment officer of Bokeh Capital Partners.
“The supply-demand problem is real, but it is exacerbated by the majority of the companies being in tech -- and the sort of tech that has ‘not available’ for most of the ratios that investors look at,” Forrest said. “So many of this year’s IPOs have indefinite time periods for profit.”
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>>> Oatly Prices IPO at Top of Range to Raise $1.4 Billion
Yahoo Finance
by Crystal Tse
May 19, 2021
(Bloomberg) -- Oatly Group AB, the vegan food and drink maker, priced its initial public offering at the top of a marketed range to raise more than $1.4 billion.
The company and its investors sold more than 84 million American depositary shares for $17 each on Wednesday, according to a statement. The Swedish company had offered the shares for $15 to $17 each.
The listing gives Oatly a market value of about $10 billion based on the outstanding shares listed in its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
U.S. markets dropped for the third day in a row, with the S&P 500 index falling 0.3% Wednesday.
The IPO underscores plant-based products’ jump into the mainstream, as environmental and health concerns spur consumers to seek alternatives to traditional meat and dairy products. Investors have been looking for ways to replicate the public-market success of Beyond Meat Inc., whose shares have surged more than 300% since it went public in May 2019.
Oatly was started in 1994 by brothers Rickard and Bjorn Oste. Using technology based on research from Sweden’s Lund University, the company turns fiber-rich oats into liquid food.
In July, Oatly secured $200 million in new capital from investors led by Blackstone Group Inc. The group also included celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Jay-Z, as well as former Starbucks Corp. founder Howard Schultz. The company was valued at about $2 billion in the round.
Oatly’s offering is being led by Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Credit Suisse Group AG. The shares are expected to begin trading Thursday on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol OTLY.
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>>> Oatly IPO Prices at $17 a Share, Notching $10 Billion Valuation
The oat-milk maker will be the latest test for the slowing market for initial public offerings
The Wall Street Journal
By Corrie Driebusch
May 19, 2021
https://www.wsj.com/articles/oatly-prepares-to-price-ipo-amid-stock-market-declines-11621456361
Swedish oat-milk maker Oatly Group AB’s initial public offering priced at $17 a share, on the high end of expectations, according to people familiar with the matter.
Oatly’s IPO raised $1.43 billion, and the $17 price tag gave the celebrity-backed company a valuation of roughly $10 billion. Oatly had set its sights on raising between $1.27 billion and $1.43 billion by selling roughly 84.4 million shares at a price of $15 to $17 a share, according to a regulatory filing. The proceeds will go to the company and selling shareholders.
Oatly’s stock will begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Thursday under the symbol OTLY.
Pricing at the high end of the range is a positive sign for Oatly, especially because going public has proved tough for several companies recently. The stock market has taken a turn lower on fears of inflation, and investors have increasingly shied away from the types of growth companies that typically go public. The Nasdaq Composite Index, chock-full of growth companies, has fallen 4.8% so far in May.
Last week, at least three companies postponed their IPOs because of volatility in the stock market. On Wednesday, website-development company Squarespace Inc.’s shares made their debut on the New York Stock Exchange at a level far below their last financing round, then proceeded to fall further through the afternoon.
(partial article)
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>>> The SPAC King Is Doing Just Fine Even as the Bubble Starts to Burst
Chamath Palihapitiya—tech billionaire, Golden State Warriors co-owner, and all-around meme lord—has a sure-thing, 100%, can’t-miss investment for you that will definitely, absolutely pay off for him.
Bloomberg
May 13, 2021
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-05-13/spac-king-chamath-palihapitiya-hopes-his-hype-will-keep-mesmerizing-you
One morning last October, as wildfires raged across Northern California, President Donald Trump convalesced from Covid-19, and Congress debated how big of a stimulus bill would be needed to rescue the economy, Chamath Palihapitiya went on TV to pitch investors on the latest stock he was taking public.
In a blue blazer and glasses, and accompanied by a bulletpointed slide deck, the Facebook-executive-turned-venture-capitalist explained how Clover Health Investments Corp. uses powerful machine-learning software to recommend treatments that keep people healthier. He predicted confidently that the insurer’s revenue would triple in two years and that its stock would increase tenfold in a decade. He granted that, yes, he’d received a stake in Clover for setting up the deal to take it public, but he said his interests were aligned with those of other investors, because he and his partners had also put about $171 million into the company themselves. “There is no way that I can win unless the stock goes up,” he told CNBC’s Squawk Box, slicing his hand through the air to punctuate each word. “This is not some get-rich-quick scheme, at least for me.”
What Palihapitiya said was partially true, in that someone who’s already wealthy enough to be part-owner of the Golden State Warriors can’t by definition get rich quick. But the way the deal was structured made it almost impossible for him to lose. Even as investors who bought the stock after watching him on TV would lose 28%, as of May 11, Palihapitiya and his partners would almost double their money, much of which was borrowed to begin with.
This kind of financial virtuosity has made Palihapitiya a billionaire, not to mention a hit on social media. He has 1.5 million Twitter followers, a popular weekly podcast, and an audience of day-trading millennials and zoomers who hang on his every word. He’s 44, cocky, blunt, and seems like the kind of guy who’d take pleasure in calling BS on current stock market hype—if he wasn’t the one behind it.
Instead, Palihapitiya argues that traditional value investors, who say some stocks are massively overpriced, are morons. Markets, he says, are all but guaranteed to go up as long as the Fed keeps printing money, and individual investors who buy popular stocks are outsmarting Wall Street. His take may be questionable, but it’s entertaining as hell.
In late January, when sober-minded financiers warned that the mania around GameStop Corp., the once-beleaguered video game retailer beloved by Reddit users, would end badly, Palihapitiya took the fun side of the bet. He invested in it himself, then criticized the brokerage firm Robinhood Markets Inc. when it temporarily suspended trading, causing the price of the company’s shares to fall. “These motherf---ers should go to jail,” Palihapitiya said on his podcast, All-In, where he and several friends talk about technology, politics, and investment strategies. Their catchphrase—“Wet your beak!”—was once gangster slang for extortion. As used by Palihapitiya it means “make tons of money on the stock market and feel awesome about it.”
Social media influencers of Palihapitiya’s stature and charisma tend to monetize their following by promoting some sort of salable product—say, a detox tea or a line of home goods. Palihapitiya has the SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company; the Clover investment was one of them. When he called for the incarceration of Robinhood’s C-suite, he suggested his fans pull out their money and put it into a competitor, Social Finance Inc., better known as SoFi, which is merging with another one of his SPACs.
Think of a SPAC as a pile of money with a ticker symbol. An investor puts in $10 and gets back one share of publicly traded stock. Then the SPAC’s sponsor uses the stash to merge with a company like Clover, taking a shortcut around the IPO process and turning a private company public. Besides the speed, the structure offers two other important advantages: First, the sponsors get to keep 20% of the stock for themselves as a kind of fee. And second, unlike in a traditional initial public offering, even an unprofitable company can make ambitious projections about all the money it’s about to make. With SPACs, pretty much any amount of boasting goes.
Although they’ve been around for decades, SPACs exploded in popularity in 2020, after Palihapitiya’s first blank-check company—originally known by the ticker symbol IPOA—saw its stock price triple four months after merging with Virgin Galactic, a Richard Branson-founded enterprise that aims to blast tourists into space. Palihapitiya has since started five more SPACs—known as IPOB, IPOC, IPOD, and so on—raising more than $4 billion. He says he’ll eventually do 26 deals, one for every letter of the alphabet.
Today it seems almost every rich, underemployed man with a bit of name recognition has raised, or is raising, a SPAC, seeking to earn a big payday by finding a company to buy. There are SPACs advised by retired athletes (Alex Rodriguez, Shaquille O’Neal), SPACs advised by washed-up politicians (Paul Ryan, John Delaney), and one SPAC advised by a dream team of NBA great David Robinson and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. About 600 SPACs have raised more than $186 billion since the beginning of last year. Some double or triple in price even before announcing any plans as investors trade tips about which electric-truck or flying-taxi startup the SPAC might buy. Palihapitiya “created a template that all SPACers could follow,” says Mark Cuban, the Shark Tank host and fellow NBA owner. “He knew what made them work and created a narrative that new investors could understand.”
Palihapitiya’s ego has seemed to expand along with the market for the hot new investment structure. In November he bought a $75 million Bombardier Global 7500, the longest-range business jet available, according to public records. On Dec. 30, 2020, he tweeted that when the price of Bitcoin—another one of his interests—hit $150,000, he’d buy the Hamptons and turn the whole region into affordable housing. In January, he hinted at a run for governor of California and began funding a campaign to recall current Governor Gavin Newsom. In February, when someone on Twitter praised Jeff Bezos’ physique, Palihapitiya replied with a shirtless selfie. “You’re welcome,” he wrote.
While longtime money managers wince at these antics, Palihapitiya’s fan base has been eating it all up. Arnav Naik, a 17-year-old from Troy, Mich., says he got into SPACs after his high school went remote and his swim season was canceled. He started reading the Reddit day-trading forum WallStreetBets and trading stock options, parlaying about $5,000 in savings into $35,000 within six months by betting on an electric-truck SPAC and GameStop.
After seeing Palihapitiya tweet about Clover, Naik doubled down. In January he put almost all his money into Clover call options—an all-or-nothing bet that the shares would go up. If they climbed to, say, $35 he could turn his savings into $130,000. “When you slap a name like ‘Chamath’ on there, it has a lot of potential to rocket up, like how Tesla did with Elon,” he says. “He’s going to join the WallStreetBets meme god pantheon.”
In 2007, Palihapitiya, who was working as a venture capitalist, sat for an interview with video artist Sylvie Blocher for an installation titled Living Pictures/Men in Gold. “I have not had my revenge yet on the insiders,” he told her. “I’m still working to get inside. And once I get inside, I will do my best to completely explode it from the inside.”
In the years since, even as he’s become a consummate insider, Palihapitiya has cultivated this image further, presenting himself as a brash outsider unafraid to tell harsh truths. His rants have tended to follow a pattern. Some group of people, often one he’d recently belonged to, is actually a craven bunch of hypocrites. His targets over the years include Facebook Inc.: “Ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.” Venture capitalists: “A bunch of soulless cowards” who pump money into “useless, idiotic companies.” Charitable giving: It’s done for “branding” and “validation.” Politicians: “They’re all f---ing puppets.” The startup economy: “An enormous multivariate kind of Ponzi scheme.” The traditional IPO process: “Negative value.” Hedge funds: “Those suck.” Big banks: “No smart person goes and works at Goldman.” Government: “Just a large validation of one’s personal ego.” Consultants: “Useless.”
Presented in opposition is Palihapitiya, who, in his telling, is interested in making money only so he can solve the world’s biggest problems, such as climate change and inequality. “Get the money, get the money, and then let’s get around a table and let’s create new rules,” he told Stanford business students in 2017. “And don’t wrap yourself in all this, like, liberal kind of bullshit about ‘oh, my God, money, blah.’?”
“The person that’s most aligned with what I want to do is me”
Palihapitiya declined to be interviewed, but his story, as he’s often told it, begins in Ottawa in a two-bedroom apartment above a laundromat. The family had immigrated to Canada from Sri Lanka and received refugee status. His parents got by on welfare, and his father struggled with drinking. In high school he worked at Burger King and ran a blackjack game in the cafeteria for cash. (He still hosts high-stakes poker games; poker pro Phil Hellmuth has said Palihapitiya usually wins.)
He went into banking after studying electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo, but quit when he received no bonus, he said on a podcast in December. He dreamed of making the Forbes billionaires list, and at his first tech job, at AOL, according to Josh Felser, who hired him, he’d say he expected to hit that number before he turned 30. “He knew little about tech, yet he had chutzpah and was an in-your-face negotiator, which we needed,” Felser says. He adds that Palihapitiya regularly stole his parking spot.
Palihapitiya joined Facebook in 2007, when it was just starting to expand to users beyond its base of college and high school students, and persuaded the then-23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg to make him head of growth. By the time he left, four years later, the company had added almost a billion users.
His next move was to use the connections he’d made at Facebook and as an angel investor to start his own venture capital firm, Social Capital. As he would later do with SPACs, Palihapitiya said his venture fund would change the world, transforming health care and education and disrupting the investment process by using data to pick companies instead of gut instinct. He called it “activist capitalism” in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek at the time, and said he hand-picked investors who shared his mission. Among them were Zuckerberg and Facebook board member Peter Thiel.
Two former employees, who asked not to be identified because they still work in the industry, say the data project never got beyond the testing stage. And its most successful bets weren’t particularly socially minded. Palihapitiya and his partners backed Slack Technologies early on, and he said he invested in Bitcoin in 2012 (up at least 500 times since then), Amazon.com in 2014 (10 times), and Tesla in 2015 (15 times). His funds have had annual returns that are double those of the S&P 500 before fees, according to his yearend 2019 investor letter. That’s served as a rebuke to critics who portray Palihapitiya as a bigmouth. He may talk a lot, but he has the returns to back it up.
As Palihapitiya got richer, he seemed to lose interest in the day-to-day work of running a venture capital firm. He divorced his wife, who’d been Social Capital’s chief operating officer, and fell in love with a glamorous Italian pharmaceutical executive. When his top partners quit, he said investing wasn’t a team sport. When investors balked, he said he didn’t need them anyway. In September 2018 he announced he wouldn’t raise any more outside funds. “I would rather spend time with the people that are 100% aligned with what I want to do,” he told the tech news site the Information. “And the person that’s most aligned with what I want to do is me.” He later compared his decision to Michael Jordan quitting basketball to try baseball.
Palihapitiya now likes to say the upheaval at Social Capital came from upheaval in his personal life, which he’s gotten over with the help of two therapists. “I realized how emotionally broken I was and incapable of really connecting with people,” he told the Recode Decode podcast in 2019. Whatever the cause, with his firm reduced to a much smaller size, Palihapitiya had more time to work on SPACs. He’d raised $690 million for his first one in 2017, saying he wanted to buy a tech company. In 2019, with an approaching deadline to find an acquisition or return the money, he decided to merge it with Branson’s Virgin Galactic.
The music-mogul-turned-airline-founder had been talking about space tourism since 2004. But Virgin Galactic had suffered two fatal accidents, still had no tourists in orbit, and was down to a few months’ worth of cash. Palihapitiya wasn’t dissuaded, pitching it as a sure thing. The business was “largely now de-risked and ready to commercialize and monetize,” he told CNBC, saying it would be as profitable as a software company. (Virgin Galactic has yet to make a commercial flight.)
Some investors were skeptical—“This isn’t the right stuff,” said the Wall Street Journal—and the stock was volatile, but it was up more than 50% in April 2020, when Palihapitiya raised more than $1 billion for two more SPACs. Much of it came from large hedge funds, who see SPACs as low-risk because the investors are allowed to redeem their shares for the $10 they paid if they don’t like the deal that gets announced, and they’re given valuable stock options to keep either way. Their only concern is that a sponsor might not be able to find a company to buy. But that wasn’t a problem for Palihapitiya. In September, one of the SPACs merged with an online real estate venture. The Clover merger came a month later.
Like Virgin Galactic, Clover wasn’t a startup. Since its founding in 2012 it had been hyped as the next big thing in health care, an insurer that would use the latest technology to hold down costs and improve care. But Clover had burned through the hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital it had raised from Google, Sequoia, and other top investors, churning through a series of executives and continually missing growth targets. Social Capital had invested $500,000 in Clover in 2015, but it passed on investing more recently because of the company’s performance, according to a former partner.
The company struggled, according to the metrics set by the government to determine how much insurers get reimbursed, ranking among the bottom 15% of plans in the U.S.’s star-rating system. An effort to expand outside New Jersey resulted in few new customers. In 2018, Clover set a goal of about 7,500 patients in Georgia, according to a former employee, but signed up just 63. A spokesman said Clover ranks more highly on a metric the government is developing that takes into account that many of its members come from underserved minority or low-income groups. It’s typical for a startup to sometimes miss its aggressive growth targets, he added.
By 2020, after almost a decade in business, Clover could have been accurately described as a small, money-losing insurer that almost exclusively operated in New Jersey and sold Medicare Advantage plans—a privately run, government-funded alternative to traditional Medicare for retirees. The outlook, in other words, wasn’t ideal. But the company had developed a software tool called Clover Assistant, which it said was the culmination of years of research. The tool uses machine learning to scan patients’ records, suggesting medications and offering possible diagnoses, according to Clover President Andrew Toy, who joined from Google in 2018. And because Clover works with a wide network of doctors, he says, it has the potential to grow as quickly as a software company, improving the entire U.S. health-care system. “We believe in software powering primary care,” he says. “Clover Assistant is the basis of our company.”
Clover had already hired JPMorgan Chase & Co. to help it go public. Then, Palihapitiya presented the possibility of merging with his SPAC instead. A deal with him offered the company the ability to enthusiastically talk up the prospects of Clover Assistant rather than dwell on its losses, as it would’ve had to do in an IPO prospectus. “There’s a different dynamic in how you can go out and talk about the company,” Toy says.
As part of its pitch, Clover said 61% of its members see a doctor who’s “contracted” to use Clover Assistant, suggesting the tool had been adopted quickly. But according to former employees, many who signed up don’t use the tool themselves. Businessweek spoke with four doctors or their assistants who were among hundreds tagged on the company’s website as “Clover Preferred,” which it says means they’ve been “recognized for their dedication to using the Clover Assistant tool.” Only one said he used it, adding that he didn’t find it helpful. “I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen it,” said another. “This is the first I’ve heard of it,” said a third. His office manager said she took his notes and copied them into Clover Assistant at the end of each day, then faxed the notes to Clover.
Emily Evans, a managing director at Hedgeye Risk Management LLC, a research firm, says most insurers offer doctors similar tools. “This software system they’re developing—they’re at the starting line, and everyone else is halfway through the marathon,” she says, adding that if Clover Assistant were already working, the company would be spending less on claims. Andy Robinson, a spokesman for Clover, says the company’s data show that only a small minority of doctors are ignorant of the tool. He says doctors are regularly using it, making, for example, 28,900 prescription changes so far based on its recommendations. Doctors who use it have medical cost ratios 11 percentage points lower than those who don’t, he says.
“While some of our doctors might not know ‘Clover Assistant’ from the name, our data clearly shows they are interacting with the product in a meaningful way,” says Mark Spektor, Clover’s chief medical officer.
Around the time of Palihapitiya’s October 2020 CNBC appearance, Nate Anderson, founder of Hindenburg Research, came across a newspaper article about a previous business started by Clover’s co-founder. Anderson is a short seller who bets against publicly traded companies and attempts to persuade the market to take his view. It’s an unpopular business, especially amid an historic bull market. Reddit traders and corporate executives blame short sellers when stocks go down. One of Anderson’s highest-profile compatriots, Andrew Left of Citron Research, quit in January after GameStop investors, angry that he’d bet against the company, hacked his social media accounts and sent obscene texts to his children.
Anderson says the SPAC boom has given the market more frauds to expose than at any time in the past decade. In September, he’d caught Nikola Corp., an electric-truck company that went public in a 2020 SPAC deal, faking a video test drive by rolling one of its trucks down a hill. After his exposé was published, the stock plummeted and the founder resigned. “The strategy with SPAC sponsors has been to take just about any company public regardless of whether it’s complete trash,” he says.
As Anderson and a member of his team dug into Clover, they spotted more red flags. On Feb. 4 he published a report: “Clover Health: How the ‘King of SPACs’ Lured Retail Investors Into a Broken Business Facing an Active, Undisclosed DOJ Investigation.” Anderson decided not to short any Clover shares but said he was releasing the report to prove the value of skeptical research. His report quoted several anonymous doctors saying Clover Assistant was useless or designed to increase billing. It cited news articles showing that Vivek Garipalli, Clover’s co-founder, also ran a hospital chain in New Jersey that had been criticized for price gouging. (The chain has said it charged insurers more so it could cover the uninsured.)
Most important, Anderson’s report included a copy of a letter that some former Clover employees had received from the U.S. Department of Justice seeking information on its sales practices. Hindenburg called it “an existential risk” for a company that gets its revenue from the government.
The stock dropped 12% that day, even as the company said it was aware of the government inquiry and had not violated any rules. Clover also said its lawyers had decided the request for information wasn’t important enough to mention, because regulators are always scrutinizing health plans. Clover Assistant, the company said, is designed to improve care, not increase billing, and often recommends treatments that actually cost Clover more. “We pay more money now in order to decrease costs and patient suffering down the line,” Garipalli said in a post on Medium.
Clover also said that criticism of Garipalli’s hospital chain was irrelevant and that other points Hindenburg had made about its sales practices were wrong. The next day, Palihapitiya wrote on Twitter: “Yesterday’s report was rife with personal attacks, thin facts, and bluster that has been rebuked by the company.” His post didn’t stop the slide. (In an email to Businessweek, Palihapitiya added that Clover “is executing on its mission to leverage its scalable technology to create better health outcomes at lower costs in a rapidly growing market. I am confident in its business and believe that Clover will compound for shareholders over the long term.”)
The SPAC boom turned to a bust not long after the Hindenburg report. Since then, SPAC shares have dropped 17% on average as of May 11, as measured by the IPOX SPAC Index. Palihapitiya’s SPACs, which had climbed quicker, fell faster, too, dropping 50% on average. Virgin Galactic was the worst of the group, crashing 68% as it delayed a planned test flight and Palihapitiya sold $200 million in stock.
As the stocks slid, the same individual investors who’d pushed them higher lost interest. Bank of America Merrill Lynch customers, for example, bought just a couple million dollars’ worth of SPAC shares in the first week of April, after loading up on as much as $120 million a week in January. In April, for the first time in a year, an entire week passed without a new SPAC raising funds in the U.S.
Naik, Palihapitiya’s teenage fan, has lost almost all his money and won’t get it back unless Clover’s stock rebounds. But he doesn’t blame Palihapitiya. “He’s doing the best he can,” Naik says. “It’ll keep growing. I really think I’ll get a huge return.” Regardless of the outcome, he plans to become an investment banker.
Unlike Naik, the hedge funds that invested in the SPAC that merged with Clover made money—filings show most sold and pocketed a quick gain around the time the deal was announced. Palihapitiya and his partners did even better. Because they gave themselves 20.7 million shares for putting the deal together, their $171 million investment has almost doubled to $320 million. A week after the Hindenburg report, Palihapitiya said he controlled a $10 billion to $15 billion fortune, triple what he’d told another interviewer 10 months earlier, and compared himself to Warren Buffett.
“A reminder to myself and others: If it were easy everyone would do it. In reality, it’s hard and most people give up,” he tweeted on March 25. “Good luck to all the players in the arena. Be proud of the dust on your face. Back to the grind?...” The next week, Palihapitiya’s jet left on a trip to Milan and then a Caribbean island. When it returned, Bloomberg News reported Palihapitiya was in talks to merge one of the SPACs he’d raised earlier in the year, known as IPOF, with Equinox Holdings Inc., the fancy gym chain.
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>>> Plant-Tech Firm Benson Hill Going Public in $2 Billion SPAC Merger
Deal’s expected cash proceeds of roughly $625 million will accelerate Benson Hill’s bid to bring down plant-based food costs, CEO says
Benson Hill says its platform can develop breeds of crops like soybeans that mature faster, have higher protein content or taste better.
Wall Street Journal
By Amrith Ramkumar
May 9, 2021
https://www.wsj.com/articles/plant-tech-firm-benson-hill-going-public-in-2-billion-spac-merger-11620601200
Benson Hill Inc. is going public by merging with a special-purpose acquisition company in a deal that values the plant-growing technology firm at $2 billion, the companies said.
The operator of a platform that uses machine learning, simulations and genetics to optimize plant growth, Benson Hill is combining with the SPAC Star Peak Corp. II. STPC -0.61% Benson Hill says it can develop breeds of crops like soybeans and yellow peas that mature faster, have higher protein content or taste better, saving growers time and resources.
Such ingredients are key for plant-based meat alternatives, and the company is also developing products for animal feed. Cheaper, more-sustainable plant-growing methods are needed to feed the world’s growing population and accelerate the fight against climate change, analysts say.
The St. Louis-based company expects to begin commercial production of its ultrahigh-protein soybean by next year and is developing a yellow-pea protein concentrate. It also has a unit that sells fresh produce to grocery stores and food distributors. The roughly $625 million in expected cash proceeds from the deal will accelerate Benson Hill’s bid to bring down plant-based food costs, Chief Executive Matt Crisp said in an interview.
“It’s positioning us to really gear shift into another level of growth,” he said.
Founded in 2012, Benson Hill expects last year’s sales of about $100 million to surge as it provides more products to food companies, restaurants and grocery stores.
Existing investors in the company include GV—the venture-capital arm of Alphabet Inc.—and agricultural trading giants Bunge Ltd. and Louis Dreyfus Co. Investors including funds managed by BlackRock Inc., Van Eck Associates Corp., Hedosophia and Lazard Asset Management are putting money into the deal through a $225 million private investment in public equity, or PIPE, associated with the merger. Those funds and money held by the SPAC are expected to yield the roughly $625 million in cash proceeds.
Benson Hill joins the group of early-stage companies tied to sustainability, such as vertical-farming company AeroFarms, that are raising money and going public through SPACs.
“If you’re serious about decarbonizing the economy, you have to decarbonize [agriculture],” said Mike Morgan, chairman of the Star Peak Corp. II SPAC and chief executive of asset manager Triangle Peak Partners LP.
Star Peak II is the second blank-check firm backed by Mr. Morgan—a former executive at energy infrastructure firm Kinder Morgan Inc. —and investors at the hedge fund Magnetar Capital. The team’s first Star Peak SPAC recently took clean-energy storage firm Stem Inc. public.
Magnetar is among the biggest SPAC investors and had nearly $2.9 billion in blank-check company holdings at the end of 2020, according to a compilation of regulatory filings by data provider SPAC Research.
SPACs like Star Peak II are shell companies that list on an exchange to acquire a private firm and take it public. They are also called blank-check companies. Merging with a SPAC has become a common way for startups to raise large sums and access investors who are excited about themes like sustainability. One reason is that SPAC mergers let startups make rosy projections about their business, which aren’t allowed in a normal initial public offering.
SPAC executives argue that they are accelerating growth for technology-driven businesses that could eventually change the world. Skeptics contend that some low-revenue firms going public via blank-check companies aren’t ready to do so and could hit individual investors with losses if their technology fails. Concerns about tighter regulation and lofty valuations have in recent weeks dragged down shares of SPACs and companies they have taken public.
So far this year, SPACs have raised more than $100 billion, according to SPAC Research, surging past 2020’s record total of more than $80 billion.
After the deal closes later this year, Benson Hill is expected to trade under the ticker symbol “BHIL.”
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Spire ->>> Second Successful 2021 Launch for Spire
Yahoo Finance
May 4, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/second-successful-2021-launch-spire-110000210.html
Spire grows LEMUR CubeSat platform with newly deployed satellites
On April 29 Spire successfully deployed two new satellites into its LEMUR constellation. The satellites bring Spire to 143 total satellites launched, with more than 110 currently in orbit. This is the second launch of 2021 for Spire and 30th launch overall.
The Low Earth Multi-Use Receiver (LEMUR) is Spire’s CubeSat platform used to track maritime, aviation, and weather activity from space. Each satellite is equipped with multiple sensors, capable of capturing data day and night and during extreme weather conditions.
These two satellites expand Spire’s rapidly growing data capture capabilities, strengthening the company's operational capacity to serve its growing global customer base. Spire leverages its constellation to deliver proprietary data, insights, and predictive analytics to its global commercial and government customers through a subscription.
"A successful deployment requires a lot of collaboration between Spire and its partners, and we’re delighted to celebrate another successful step in serving our customers with fresh data and insights," said Spire CEO, Peter Platzer. "We are committed to reliably serve our customers a little better every day. With this latest deployment we’re better equipped to help organizations across the world confidently and efficiently make decisions that matter with deliberate speed."
The satellites were named by two key members of the Spire team, one of the "perks" every person working at Spire enjoys. Keith Johnson, VP and General Manager of Federal, named the first "Special K" after a nickname from his two sons. Svante Eriksson, AIS payload captain, named the second "Svante-Amanda" for himself and his wife.
About Spire Global, Inc.
Spire is a global provider of space-based data and analytics that offers unique datasets and powerful insights about Earth from the ultimate vantage point - space - so organizations can make decisions with confidence, accuracy, and speed. Spire uses the largest multi-purpose satellite constellation to source hard to acquire, valuable data and enriches it with predictive solutions. Spire then provides this data as a subscription to organizations around the world so they can improve business operations, decrease their environmental footprint, deploy resources for growth and competitive advantage, and mitigate risk. Spire gives commercial and government organizations the competitive advantage they seek to innovate and solve some of the world’s toughest problems with insights from space. Spire has offices in San Francisco, CA, Boulder, CO, Washington DC, Glasgow, Luxembourg, and Singapore. On March 1, 2021 Spire announced plans to go public through a planned business combination with NavSight Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: NSH), to be traded on the NYSE under the ticker symbol "SPIR." To learn more, visit spire.com.
About NavSight Holdings, Inc.
NavSight Holdings, Inc. is a blank check company formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses. NavSight was organized with the opportunity to pursue a business combination target in any business or industry, with the intent to focus its search on identifying a prospective target business that provides expertise and technology to U.S. government customers in support of their national security, intelligence and defense missions.
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>>> Rocket Lab Is a Mini-SpaceX That Investors Can Buy Today
Barron's
By Al Root and Nicholas Jasinski
March 2, 2021
https://www.barrons.com/articles/rocket-lab-is-a-mini-spacex-that-investors-can-buy-today-51614692583?siteid=yhoof2
There’s a space company capturing the imagination of investors that engineers its own rockets, has launched dozens of satellites into orbit, and has planned missions to the Moon, Mars, and even Venus.
No, it isn’t SpaceX—it’s Rocket Lab USA. But there are many similarities between the two.
Rocket, for instance, plans to sell space-based services from its own constellation of internally built satellites. SpaceX plans to offer high-speed internet access from space using its own Starlink satellites.
Rocket Lab, like SpaceX, is focused on vertical integration in the fledgling space industry. The company wants to have its own launch capabilities, operate its own satellites, and provide services to other customers. “Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company,” CEO Peter Beck says.
Rocket Lab and SpaceX are the only private companies delivering launches today. Since its founding in 2014, Rocket Lab has completed 18 launches to space and deployed 97 satellites into orbit on behalf of more than 20 customers. It has a total of three launchpads in Virginia and New Zealand, each of which can handle 44 launches a year.
Rocket Lab’s in-use Electron rocket is for launching relatively small satellites into space. Its next planned vehicle is to be called Neutron, which will be a medium-lift rocket with an eight-ton payload capacity. That will be a direct competitor to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Rocket Lab expects 98% of satellites to be launched by 2029 to be lifted by one of those two rockets. Both have reusable components—which reduce the cost and turnaround time of a launch—and the Neutron rocket will also be able to carry human astronauts. It’s on track to be ready for use in 2024.
Rocket Lab’s third product is a satellite already orbiting earth called, naturally, Photon. The company has plans to send it to the Moon, Mars, and Venus. That’s a “turnkey satellite solution” designed and launched by Rocket Lab to save customers time and cost, says Beck. Rocket also refers to it as “satellite-as-a-service.” Rocket Lab adds the satellite as a free stowaway to its launches for other customers.
Rocket Lab is becoming a publicly traded company by merging with Vector Acquisition (ticker: VACQ). If approved by shareholders, that deal is expected to close in the second quarter, when Vector’s ticker symbol will convert to RKLB. Meanwhile, investors interested in space can, essentially, buy Rocket Lab stock now.
SpaceX was most recently valued at $74 billion, making it one of the most valuable aerospace and defense franchises on the globe. Based on where Vector stock closed on Monday—up 36%, to $13.95, with about 483 million postmerger shares—Rocket Lab stock is valued at about $6.7 billion. Its previous round of private funding valued the company at $1.4 billion.
The valuation difference might be an opportunity for growth investors. Rocket Lab expects to have close to $1.6 billion in revenue in 2027, up from a forecast of $69 million this year. By 2027, the company projects about $900 million in launch revenues and $700 million from its space systems.
Management expects Ebitda, short for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, to hit about $500 million in 2027 and sees the company first breaking even on a free cash flow basis in 2024.
That’s a lot of projected growth. Investors will have to decide if management’s forecasts will come to fruition.
“Rocket Lab is a once-in-a-generation company,” says Vector Acquisition’s CEO Alex Slusky, pointing to Rocket Lab’s existing technology and operations. “The company doesn’t just have a pipeline, which is an amorphous concept. It has a backlog, which is very concrete…And there’s a world of difference between having delivered dozens of launches with customers’ payloads versus having aspirations of one day completing your first launch.”
Slusky, who is the founder and CIO of private-equity firm Vector Capital (the SPAC’s sponsor), will join Rocket Labs’ board of directors once the merger closes. Vector Acquisition’s deal with Rocket Lab will provide the company with about $740 million in cash after expenses, coming from the SPAC’s $320 million trust and a $470 million PIPE from institutional investors including Vector Capital, BlackRock, and Neuberger Berman.
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Investors HUB
Discussion board - 'IPOs + SPACs of Interest'
This is an important board because it is important for me to keep an eye out for new listings, regardless of the vehicle used to become a publicly-traded company.
SPAC
IPO
DUTCH AUCTION (GOOGLE)
APO (Alternative Public Offering)
DPO (Direct Public Offering)
RM (Reverse Merger)
https://investorshub.advfn.com/secure/post_reply.aspx?message_id=161767316
You are not buying a SPAC, you are buying a COMPANY. Do your DD.
>>> Investors in SPACs Need to Know the Real Deal
If they still want to buy, so be it.
Bloomberg
February 11, 2021
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-11/investors-in-spacs-need-to-know-the-real-deal
They’re lucrative for Wall Street. For their investors, not so much.
It’s hard to believe anyone would pay $10 for $7 worth of a company’s shares. Yet that’s roughly what a lot of investors have been doing, by participating in a financial innovation known as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.
People have every right to give away their money. But the government — specifically, the Securities and Exchange Commission — ought to ensure that they have at least an inkling of what they’re doing.
SPACs have become a wildly popular way for people to get a piece of up-and-coming private companies that are about to be taken public. These vehicles say, in effect: Pay us $10, and we’ll find an exciting target to invest in — and if you don’t like our choice, we’ll give you your money back with interest. We’ll even throw in some warrants, which allow you to buy more shares at a discount if things go well. Sounds tempting.
To be sure, the enterprise benefits many of those involved. SPAC sponsors, who range from celebrities to titans of finance, typically get a share for every four shares bought by investors. Target companies get a relatively simple path to public ownership. Hedge funds get an arbitrage opportunity: By flipping or redeeming the shares, for example, they can obtain warrants for free. Investment banks collect fees for handling both stages of the process — the SPAC’s initial share offering and the subsequent merger that turns the target into a public company.
There’s also a big regulatory advantage: The structure skirts disclosure rules. Because the SPAC is little more than a bank account, it needs only a cursory initial public offering prospectus. And because the merger isn’t a traditional IPO, certain constraints don’t apply: The target company, for example, can make claims about future growth and profitability that might otherwise risk litigation.
Yet for those who actually buy into SPACs to invest in promising companies — including retail investors who purchase the shares on the open market — the cost can be exorbitant. Once the sponsors, hedge funds and bankers have taken their cuts, the remaining SPAC shareholders are left with a diluted stake. One analysis of 47 deals consummated between January 2019 and June 2020, for example, estimated that by the time of the merger with the target company, the typical SPAC retained less than $7 per share (compared with the $10 per share its initial investors paid).
Not so tempting when you put it like that. Yet since the beginning of 2020, SPACs have raised more than $100 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Are the prospects of the target companies really so great — and the skills of the SPAC sponsors so valuable — that people are willing to take a hit of more than 30% just to participate? Or has the combination of opacity and financial engineering blinded them to the actual costs?
There’s a good way to find out: Give investors better information about what they’re getting into. To that end, the SEC should require SPACs to provide prospective shareholders with estimates of the dilution they will experience in different scenarios — akin to the management-fee disclosure required of investment funds. Regulators should also insist that target companies adhere to regular IPO disclosure rules.
If the SPAC magic still proves so attractive that investors knowingly keep piling in, fine. They’ve been warned. If not, perhaps more sponsors will adopt structures designed to produce better outcomes — as at least one large sponsor has done. Shed light, then let the market decide.
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SAII-Otonomo - >>> SHAREHOLDER NOTICE: Brodsky & Smith, LLC Announces an Investigation of Software Acquisition Group Inc. II (Nasdaq - SAII)
Yahoo Finance
February 2, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shareholder-notice-brodsky-smith-llc-235300224.html
BALA CYNWYD, PA / ACCESSWIRE / February 2, 2021 / Law office of Brodsky & Smith, LLC announces that it is investigating potential claims against the Board of Directors of Software Acquisition Group Inc. II ("Software Acquisition II" or the "Company") (NASDAQ:SAII) for possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of federal and state law in connection with a merger agreement pursuant to which Software Acquisition II, a special purpose acquisition company, will combine with Otonomo Technologies Ltd. ("Otonomo"), a provider of a leading platform and marketplace for vehicle data, and result in Otonomo becoming a publicly-listed company. Under the terms of the agreement, Software Acquisition II shareholders will retain ownership of only 12.2% of the combined company.
The investigation concerns whether the Software Acquisition II Board breached its fiduciary duties to shareholders by failing to conduct a fair process, including the dilution of ownership interest in the combined company.
If you own shares of Software Acquisition II stock and wish to discuss the legal ramifications of the investigation, or have any questions, you may e-mail or call the law office of Brodsky & Smith, LLC who will, without obligation or cost to you, attempt to answer your questions. You may contact Jason L. Brodsky, Esquire, or Marc L. Ackerman, Esquire at Brodsky & Smith, LLC, Two Bala Plaza, Suite 805, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004, visit
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SAII - OTONOMO - >>> SHAREHOLDER ALERT: WeissLaw LLP Investigates Software Acquisition Group Inc. II
Yahoo Finance
February 1, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shareholder-alert-weisslaw-llp-investigates-205700494.html
NEW YORK, Feb. 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- WeissLaw LLP is investigating possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law by the board of directors of Software Acquisition Group Inc. II ("SAII" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: SAII) in connection with the Company's proposed merger with Otonomo Technologies Ltd. ("Otonomo"), a privately held automotive data services platform. Under the terms of the merger agreement, SAII will acquire Otonomo through a reverse merger that will result in Otonomo becoming a public company traded on the NASDAQ. The transaction values the combined company at an equity value of approximately $1.4 billion.
If you own SAII shares and wish to discuss this investigation or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests, visit our website:
https://www.weisslawllp.com/SAII/
Or please contact:
Joshua Rubin, Esq.
WeissLaw LLP
1500 Broadway, 16th Floor
New York, NY 10036
(212) 682-3025
(888) 593-4771
stockinfo@weisslawllp.com
WeissLaw LLP is investigating whether SAII's board acted in the best interest of SAII's public shareholders in agreeing to the proposed transaction, whether the board was fully informed as to the valuation of Otonomo, and whether all information regarding the process undertaken by the board and the valuation of the transaction will be fully and fairly disclosed to SAII public shareholders.
WeissLaw LLP has litigated hundreds of stockholder class and derivative actions for violations of corporate and fiduciary duties. We have recovered over a billion dollars for defrauded clients and obtained important corporate governance relief in many of these cases. If you have information or would like legal advice concerning possible corporate wrongdoing (including insider trading, waste of corporate assets, accounting fraud, or materially misleading information), consumer fraud (including false advertising, defective products, or other deceptive business practices), or anti-trust violations, please email us at stockinfo@weisslawllp.com
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>>> Otonomo, Leading Platform and Marketplace for Vehicle Data, to List on Nasdaq Through a Business Combination with Software Acquisition Group Inc. II
Yahoo Finance
February 1, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/otonomo-leading-platform-marketplace-vehicle-114900822.html
Otonomo Technologies Ltd. (Otonomo), provider of a leading platform and marketplace for vehicle data and positioned at the epicenter of the data revolution in the automotive and mobility space, announces a business combination with Software Acquisition Group Inc. II (Nasdaq: SAII) ("Software Acquisition"), a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company or SPAC, to become publicly listed.
The transaction is expected to result in excess of $307 million in cash comprised of Software Acquisition’s $172.5 million of cash in trust, assuming no redemptions by public stockholders, a fully committed primary and secondary PIPE of $172.5 million led by institutional investors Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, BNP Paribas Asset Management Energy Transition Fund and Senvest Management LLC with support from strategic investors Dell Technologies Capital and Hearst Ventures, and approximately $25 million of cash currently on hand.
The transaction implies an equity value of approximately $1.4 billion and Otonomo is expected to have approximately $307 million of cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet, assuming no redemptions by Software Acquisition’s stockholders.
Following the targeted closing of the transaction in the second quarter of 2021, the combined company will be listed on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "OTMO".
The transaction will enable Otonomo to reinforce its position as market leader, accelerate its go-to-market strategies and unlock new use cases and end markets.
Otonomo Technologies, Ltd., a leading platform and marketplace for vehicle data, and Software Acquisition Group, Inc. II (Nasdaq: SAII), a US publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement for a business combination. Upon closing of the transaction, the combined company will operate under the Otonomo name and will be listed on Nasdaq under the new ticker symbol "OTMO".
Company Overview
Otonomo is the premier one-stop shop for vehicle data. Since its founding in 2015, Otonomo has built a vehicle data platform and marketplace that now fuels an ecosystem of 16 OEMs, fleets and more than 100 service providers. The platform ingests more than 4 billion data points per day from over 40 million global connected vehicles, then reshapes and enriches them, in order to accelerate the time to market for new services that improve the in-and-around the car experience. Otonomo’s platform allows automotive OEMs the opportunity to create new revenue streams by enabling the utilization of the vast amounts of data vehicles generate on a daily basis and that OEMs are required to store and maintain.
In addition to its proprietary data platform, Otonomo has developed a robust suite of SaaS offerings that provide data consumers with additional capabilities and vertically specific applications. Privacy by design and neutrality are at the core of Otonomo’s platform, which enables GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy-regulation-compliant solutions using both personal and aggregate data.
Otonomo vehicle data is being utilized by organizations and businesses across diverse areas, including, but not limited to fleet management, insurance, in-vehicle management, emergency services, mapping, electric vehicle (EV) management, subscription-based services, parking, predictive maintenance, in-vehicle services, traffic management and smart cities.
Management Comments
Jonathan Huberman, Software Acquisition Group Inc. II, CEO, said:
"We established Software Acquisition Group Inc. II to invest in a world class software company that is positioned to be the leading player in a market that has enormous potential. We reviewed multiple potential partners and Otonomo stood out as the clear choice. Otonomo management not only identified the significant opportunity that exists in the automotive data space, but they have also achieved early market leadership and are positioned for impressive growth."
Ben Volkow, Otonomo, CEO and Founder, said:
"This is an industry defining moment. Otonomo’s vehicle data platform and marketplace are primed to unleash the full potential of connected vehicle data. We have succeeded in bringing the widest diversity of data providers to a marketplace, developing a proprietary and highly scalable technology platform, and building a global and diverse network of data providers and consumers. Recent investments and our partnership with Software Acquisition Group II signify confidence in our strategy, the forward drive of our business and the significant growth opportunity that awaits. We look forward to Otonomo’s continued and increasing impact on the driving experience, unlocking new opportunities for our data consumers across multiple markets and the entire transportation ecosystem."
Otonomo Highlights
Otonomo’s mission is to harness the immense potential of automotive data by providing thousands of organizations across a broad range of markets the ability to seamlessly access, explore, analyze, and unlock the full potential of vehicle data. By doing so, Otonomo is committed to delivering solutions that adhere to the strictest privacy and security standards. We aspire to create a mobility ecosystem that uses data to make every driving experience truly rewarding. Our vision is to enable a world of environmentally friendly cities that run more efficiently. Our data services platform reshapes, harmonizes, enriches and secures connected car data so that our growing network of technology partners and customers can deliver advanced driver and transportation solutions.
Transaction Overview
Pursuant to the transaction, Software Acquisition will combine with Otonomo at an estimated $1.4 billion pro forma equity value. Otonomo’s existing shareholders are rolling approximately 97% of their equity into the combined company and will own approximately 72% of the issued and outstanding shares immediately following closing of the business combination, assuming no redemptions by Software Acquisition’s public stockholders.
The transaction is expected to result in excess of $307 million in cash comprised of Software Acquisition’s $172.5 million cash held in trust, assuming no redemptions by public stockholders, a fully committed $172.5 million PIPE comprised of $142.5 million primary and $30 million secondary shares and approximately $25 million of cash currently on hand. Cash proceeds from the transaction will be used to fund growth of the combined company, accelerating go-to-market strategy, strengthening our leadership position and unlocking new use cases and end markets.
The PIPE is anchored by institutional investors Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, BNP Paribas Asset Management Energy Transition Fund and Senvest Management LLC, with support from strategic investors Dell Technologies Capital, and Hearst Ventures. Current Otonomo shareholders will own a majority of the combined company at closing.
The Board of Directors of Otonomo has unanimously approved the proposed transaction, which is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021. The board of directors of Software Acquisition has also unanimously approved the proposed transaction. The proposed transaction is subject to approval by Otonomo and Software Acquisition stockholders and the satisfaction of the closing conditions set forth in the business combination agreement. Following completion of the transaction, Otonomo’s highly experienced management team will operate the combined company with Ben Volkow continuing to serve as Chief Executive Officer.
Additional information about the proposed business combination, including a copy of the business combination agreement and the investor presentation, will be filed by Software Acquisition in a Current Report on Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission and will be available at www.sec.gov.
Advisors
Citigroup is serving as financial advisor to Otonomo, and Latham & Watkins LLP and Gross Law Firm are serving as legal advisors to Otonomo. B. Riley Securities is acting as placement agent and capital markets advisor, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Gornitzky & Co are acting as legal advisor to Software Acquisition Group Inc. II.
Investor Conference Call Information
Otonomo and Software Acquisition will host a joint investor conference call regarding the proposed transaction today, February 1, 2021. The investor presentation is being filed by Otonomo and Software Acquisition with the SEC prior to the call and will be available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.
Access the audio replay here.
About Otonomo
Otonomo fuels a data ecosystem of 16 OEMs, fleets and more than 100 service providers. Our platform securely ingests more than 4 billion data points per day from over 40 million global connected vehicles, then reshapes and enriches it, to accelerate time to market for new services that improve the in-and-around the car experience. Privacy by design and neutrality are at the core of our platform, which enables GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy-regulation-compliant solutions using both personal and aggregate data. Use cases include emergency services, mapping, EV management, subscription-based services, parking, predictive maintenance, insurance, media, in-vehicle services, traffic management, and smart city solutions. Otonomo is headquartered and has an R&D center in Israel, and it has a presence in the United States, and Europe.
For more information, visit www.otonomo.io.
About Software Acquisition Group Inc II
Software Acquisition Group, Inc. II. is a blank check company formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or similar business combination. Software Acquisition Group, Inc. II raised $172.5 million in its initial public offering in September 2020. Software Acquisition securities are listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the ticker symbols SAII, SAIIU and SAIIW.
Additional information and Where to Find It
This communication relates to a proposed business combination between Otonomo Technologies Ltd. ("Otonomo") and Software Acquisition Group Inc. II ("Software Acquisition"). In connection with the proposed business combination, Otonomo intends to file a registration statement on Form F-4 that will include a proxy statement of Software Acquisition in connection with Software Acquisition’s solicitation of proxies for the vote by Software Acquisition’s stockholders with respect to the proposed business combination and a prospectus of Otonomo. The proxy statement/prospectus will be sent to all Software Acquisition stockholders and Otonomo and Software Acquisition will also file other documents regarding the proposed business combination with the SEC. This communication does not contain all the information that should be considered concerning the proposed business combination and is not intended to form the basis of any investment decision or any other decision in respect of the business combination. Before making any voting or investment decision, investors and security holders are urged to read the registration statement, the proxy statement/prospectus and all other relevant documents filed or that will be filed with the SEC in connection with the proposed Business Combination as they become available because they will contain important information about the proposed transaction.
Investors and security holders will be able to obtain free copies of the registration statement, proxy statement/prospectus and all other relevant documents filed or that will be filed with the SEC by Otonomo and Software Acquisition through the website maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov. In addition, the documents filed by Otonomo may be obtained free of charge from Otonomo’s website at www.otonomo.io or by written request to Otonomo at Otonomo Technologies Ltd., 16 Abba Eban Blvd., Herzliya Pituach, Israel 467256.
Participants in Solicitation
Otonomo, Software Acquisition and their respective directors and executive officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from Software Acquisition’s shareholders with respect to the proposed business combination. You can find information about Software Acquisition’s directors and executive officers and their ownership of Software Acquisition’s securities in Software Acquisition’s final prospectus relating to its initial public offering, dated September 14, 2020, which was filed with the SEC on September 15, 2020 and is available free of charge at the SEC’s web site at www.sec.gov. Additional information regarding the participants in the solicitation of proxies from Software Acquisition’s shareholders and their direct and indirect interests will be included in the proxy statement/prospectus for the proposed business combination when it becomes available. Shareholders, potential investors and other interested persons should read the proxy statement/prospectus carefully when it becomes available before making any voting or investment decisions. You may obtain free copies of these documents from the sources indicated above.
No Offer or Solicitation
This communication does not constitute an offer to sell or exchange, or the solicitation of an offer to buy or exchange any securities, or a solicitation of any vote or approval, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, sale or exchange would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. No offering of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of section 10 of the Securities Act, or an exemption therefrom.
Forward-Looking Statements
This communication includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws with respect to the proposed business combination between Otonomo and Software Acquisition, including statements regarding the benefits of the business combination, the anticipated timing of the business combination, the products and services offered by Otonomo and the markets in which it operates, and Otonomo’s projected future results. These forward-looking statements are generally identified by terminology such as "believe," "may," "will," "potentially," "estimate," "continue," "anticipate," "intend," "could," "would," "project," "target," "plan," "expect," or the negatives of these terms or variations of them or similar terminology. These forward-looking statements are based upon estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by Software Acquisition and its management, and Otonomo and its management, as the case may be, are inherently uncertain. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. New risks and uncertainties may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible to predict all risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual future events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this document, including but not limited to: (i) the risk that the transaction may not be completed in a timely manner or at all, which may adversely affect the price of Software Acquisition’s securities, (ii) the risk that the transaction may not be completed by Software Acquisition’s business combination deadline and the potential failure to obtain an extension of the business combination deadline if sought by Software Acquisition, (iii) the failure to satisfy the conditions to the consummation of the transaction, including the adoption of the business combination agreement by the shareholders of Software Acquisition and Otonomo, the satisfaction of the minimum trust account amount following redemptions by Software Acquisition’s public shareholders and the receipt of certain governmental and regulatory approvals, (iv) the lack of a third party valuation in determining whether to pursue the proposed business combination, (v) the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstance that could give rise to the termination of the business combination agreement, (vi) the effect of the announcement or pendency of the transaction on Otonomo’s business relationships, performance, and business generally, (vii) risks that the proposed business combination disrupts current plans of Otonomo and potential difficulties in Otonomo employee retention as a result of the proposed transaction, (viii) the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against Otonomo or against Software Acquisition related to the business combination agreement or the proposed business combination, (ix) the ability of Otonomo to list its ordinary shares on the Nasdaq, (x) volatility in the price of the combined company’s securities due to a variety of factors, including changes in the competitive and highly regulated industries in which Otonomo plans to operate, variations in performance across competitors, changes in laws and regulations affecting Otonomo’s business and changes in the combined capital structure, and (xi) the ability to implement business plans, forecasts, and other expectations after the completion of the proposed business combination, and to identify and realize additional opportunities. The foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. You should carefully consider the foregoing factors and the other risks and uncertainties described in the "Risk Factors" section of Software Acquisition’s, Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and other documents filed by Software Acquisition from time to time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") and the registration statement on Form F-4 and proxy statement/prospectus discussed above. These filings identify and address other important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and Otonomo and Software Acquisition assume no obligation and do not intend to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
Nothing in this communication should be regarded as a representation by any person that the forward-looking statements set forth herein will be achieved or that any of the contemplated results of such forward-looking statements will be achieved.
Any financial and capitalization information or projections in this communication are forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions that are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond Otonomo’s and Software Acquisition’s control. While such information and projections are necessarily speculative, Otonomo and Software Acquisition believe that the preparation of prospective financial information involves increasingly higher levels of uncertainty the further out the projection extends from the date of preparation. The assumptions and estimates underlying the projected results are inherently uncertain and are subject to a wide variety of significant business, economic and competitive risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the projections. The inclusion of financial information or projections in this communication should not be regarded as an indication that Otonomo or Software Acquisition, or their respective representatives and advisors, considered or consider the information or projections to be a reliable prediction of future events.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210201005417/en/
Contacts
For Otonomo
Media
Jodi Joseph Asiag
Otonomo
media@otonomo.io
Investors
Michael Anderson
Blueshirt Capital Advisors
investors@otonomo.io
For Software Acquisition Group Inc. II
Media and Investors
Jonathan Huberman
jon@softwareaqn.com
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>>> Israeli Startup Otonomo Nearing Merger With Software SPAC
Bloomberg
By Gillian Tan, David Welch, and Edward Ludlow
January 29, 2021
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-29/israeli-startup-otonomo-said-nearing-merger-with-software-spac?srnd=premium
Platform is fueled by data from more than 22 million vehicles
Otonomo’s earlier investors include Bessemer, Avis, Maniv
Otonomo, an Israeli startup that operates a data platform linked to millions of connected cars, is in talks to go public through a merger with Software Acquisition Group Inc. II, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The special purpose acquisition company is in talks to raise new equity to support a transaction that could be announced as soon as next week, said the person, who requested anonymity because the information isn’t public. The deal size couldn’t immediately be learned and it’s possible that, as with any deal that isn’t finalized, talks could collapse.
A representative for Software Acquisition Group declined to comment. Representatives for Otonomo didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The SPAC’s shares rose 18% in after-hours trading on Friday.
Otonomo, led by Chief Executive Officer and founder Ben Volkow, takes over 4 billion data points per day from more than 22 million connected vehicles, according to its website.
The data is used for emergency services, mapping, parking and predictive maintenance, and partners include BMW AG, Daimler AG, Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and Mercedes-Benz.
The company last year raised fresh capital from investors including SK Holdings Co., Avis Budget Group, Maniv Mobility, Alliance Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners. It was valued at about $465 million after that funding round, PitchBook data shows.
Software Acquisition Group, led by CEO Jonathan Huberman, raised $172.5 million in a September initial public offering and said at the time that it intends to focus its search on software companies.
Huberman’s first SPAC in October merged with CuriosityStream Inc., a media company that specializes in documentaries, among other features.
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I think you're absolutely right! I am studying the topic managed it service providers and I think that the market for companies that provide such services will grow in the near future that will lead to a surge in competition and software on the market, it will certainly not be as big as 10 years ago.
IS $AFRM RELATED TO NE BANKRUPTED ?????
>>> UiPath files confidential IPO paperwork, could become one of New York City’s biggest tech companies
CNBC
DEC 17 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/17/uipath-files-for-ipo-could-become-one-of-nycs-biggest-tech-companies.html
Robotic process automation company UiPath has submitted a draft registration to the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering.
The company becomes the latest to take advantage of a frenzied IPO market and bull market for stocks that’s continued despite nine months of the coronavirus pandemic and a difficult year for the broader economy.
Earlier this year, UiPath raised $225 million at a $10.2 billion valuation — one that would rank it among the most valuable New York City tech companies at the time of its Wall Street debut.
The company, ranked No. 50 on this year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list, did not disclose its financial information nor did it specify how many shares would be offered.
UiPath is the latest company taking advantage of a bull market that’s continued despite nine months of the coronavirus pandemic and a difficult year for the broader economy. Three of the 10 biggest tech IPOs for U.S. companies, in terms of capital raised, have taken place this year. Two happened on consecutive days in the last week, when DoorDash and Airbnb started trading on Dec. 9 and 10. The other was software vendor Snowflake, which had its New York Stock Exchange debut in September.
On Thursday, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and online retailer Poshmark both announced their intention to go public.
Investors and bankers have told CNBC that UiPath is among a large crop of subscription software companies that could have significant debuts next year. Others include GitLab, a site that helps developers share and manage code; HashiCorp, which provides cloud infrastructure automation software; Databricks, a provider of software that allows companies to analyze and use large data sets; and Tanium, a cloud security vendor.
Earlier this year, UiPath raised $225 million at a $10.2 billion valuation — one that would rank it among the most-valuable New York City tech companies like Etsy and MongoDB at the time of its Wall Street debut. The round was led by Alkeon Capital Management, a tech-focused hedge fund that’s become one of the industry’s best performers this year by betting big on e-commerce retailers and work-from-home plays.
UiPath uses artificial intelligence to build software robots that let companies automate back-office, repetitive and time-consuming tasks. The goal is to move humans away from this work and allow them to focus on things that bring more value to a company. Investors see great promise in this: Since the company was founded in 2005, UiPath has raised over $1 billion in funding from investors, including Coatue, Dragoneer, Sands Capital and Wellington. The company claims to have annual revenue of about $360 million and more than 6,300 customers, including Amazon, Bank of America and Verizon. It says 50% of Fortune 20 companies are clients.
As companies use AI from UiPath and other advanced technologies to help them with digital transformation, the whole topic of robotics seems eerily dystopian. The worry is that robots will replace humans in all kinds of tasks, repetitive and otherwise. UiPath says its software isn’t out to replace humans, but rather enable them to focus on parts of their job that only humans can do.
The company, which issued a release announcing the IPO registration, declined CNBC’s request for comment. Founder and CEO Daniel Dines said in a July statement that “Covid-19 has heightened the critical need of automation to address challenges and create value in days and weeks, not months and years,” adding that UiPath is “committed to working harder to help our customers evolve, transform, and succeed fast in the new normal.”
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Tanium - >>> Developer of unified endpoint management and security platform designed to simplify endpoint security and configuration compliance. The company's security and systems management service empowers security and IT operations teams to ask questions about the state of every endpoint across the enterprise in plain English, retrieve data on their current state and execute change as necessary, all within seconds, enabling organizations to effectively get protected against modern-day threats and realize new levels of cost efficiency in IT operations. <<<
>>> IPOs in 2021: After a year of impressive pandemic offerings, these tech companies expect to keep it rolling
MarketWatch
Jan. 2, 2021
By Emily Bary
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/another-rush-of-ipos-on-tap-for-2021-after-a-year-of-impressive-pandemic-offerings-11608773192?siteid=yhoof2
Despite COVID-19 and its economic effects, IPOs raised $150 billion in 2020, their best year since the dot-com-boom era, and the pipeline is full
It is typical for companies to delay their initial public offerings when the market for them is weak, but the unprecedented year that is 2020 is ending with companies delaying IPOs because the market is too strong.
Gaming company Roblox Inc. RBLX, and lending company Affirm Holdings Inc. AFRM, both opted to delay their IPOs that were planned for this December, following big first-day surges for Airbnb Inc. ABNB, -0.96% and DoorDash Inc. DASH, 5.04% shares. The huge initial pops for Airbnb and DoorDash suggest those companies left a lot of money on the table, and Roblox and Affirm are reportedly seeing whether they can better cash in on continuing strong demand for IPOs in 2021.
The delays were a suitable end to an unbelievable 2020 for IPOs, with young technology companies and blank-check offerings leading to the biggest year for Wall Street debuts since the heyday of the dot-com boom, despite a pandemic. In all, it was the best IPO year in terms of deal count and capital raises since the 1990s, according to data compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers, with 183 traditional IPOs and 242 SPAC deals raising slightly more than $150 billion in total.
The 2020 IPO market is also notable for the depth of billion-dollar deals, PwC’s IPO lead David Ethridge told MarketWatch. More than 20 companies raked in at least $1 billion through their offerings in 2020, led by Bill Ackman’s $4 billion special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, and capital raises topping $3 billion from Airbnb, DoorDash and database software company Snowflake Inc. SNOW, 0.04%.
Few would have predicted that a period accompanied by global economic woes brought on by a pandemic, elevated unemployment and high market volatility would also be highly conducive to IPOs, Ethridge said, but other dynamics could keep the IPO market roaring through 2021, in his view. He points to an accommodative interest-rate policy from the Federal Reserve that’s expected to persist for years, as well as positive developments on the vaccine front that could give the economy a jolt.
By postponing their offerings, Roblox and Affirm have time to file amended paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission that could enable them to either sell more shares or sell the same amount of shares for a much higher price, according to James Angel, a finance professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. But the companies are in a “high-stakes poker game,” he continued, since the SEC is reportedly backed up with paperwork and there’s no telling how long the IPO market will stay this hot.
Many companies are betting it will stay hot, with a rush of confidential and public IPO filings at the end of 2020 setting up a stacked slate of 2021 IPO candidates. Food-delivery company Instacart, clothing marketplace Poshmark POSH, , retail-trading platform Robinhood and software company UiPath are among the hottest names predicted to go public in the year ahead.
Those companies could face many other offers, however, especially from SPACs that have raised billions of dollars in 2020 in hopes of acquiring companies. SPACs proved “the perfect product for the time” as people looked to pour money into the equity markets this year, PwC’s Ethridge said.
“This is the year of the SPAC,” he told MarketWatch, with 2020 alone accounting for more than half of all SPAC deals over the past decade.
The coming months could feature a “private-to-public pop” in which companies that didn’t plan to IPO for two or so years end up going public via the SPAC route, according to Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
“You have $200 billion in capital out there hunting,” he told MarketWatch.
The options companies face as they consider going public were obvious in the case of Postmates, which navigated through SPAC offers, the IPO process and acquisition offers from competitors before deciding to merge with delivery rival Uber Technologies Inc. UBER, 2.38% earlier this year. MKM Partners analyst Rohit Kulkarni expects a “barbell-based approach,” in which smaller tech companies go public through SPACs, larger ones go public through IPOs, and a few large brand-name tech companies consider direct listings, as Palantir Technologies Inc. PLTR, 2.60% used when it went public in September without raising new funds.
The current environment could continue to see more private equity-backed companies come to market as well. A year ago, “people were talking about when we might see a recession, but you don’t hear any talk of that now because of where people see interest-rate policy now,” Ethridge said. That creates a more attractive setup for private-equity companies, in his view, since they normally don’t sell their shares at the time of an IPO but rather look to sell over time at higher prices.
“When you don’t think there’s going to be a recession, that’s a much more amenable forecast,” he said.
Here are some of the companies expected to attempt the 2021 journey to the hot IPO market before it cools down:
Consumer brands
The pandemic cast a new shine on some consumer-facing tech companies. Just a year ago, the food-delivery space was viewed as unattractive due to intense competition, a heavy reliance on subsidies and an enduring lack of profits, but DoorDash gained increased prominence with housebound diners during the COVID-19 crisis. Now investors seem upbeat about what the company will be able to do by combining its ballooning user base with a logistics network that could be used for more than just delivery.
DoorDash raised more than $3.3 billion through its December offering and saw its shares surge 85% on listing day. Companies like it that are benefiting from the stay-at-home trends brought on by the pandemic “will probably continue to do that over the next six to nine months,” said EquityZen Chief Revenue Officer Phil Haslett, since it will take time before a COVID-19 vaccine becomes widely distributed and the economy can fully reopen.
Fellow delivery-oriented company Instacart could follow in DoorDash’s footsteps during 2021. Prior to COVID-19, there was doubt over whether businesses like Instacart would ever be able to reach profitability due to a perceived need to subsidize deliveries, and the open question is “whether the pandemic has changed that,” said Deeksha Gupta, a finance professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. The crisis brought in a new base of users who hadn’t tried grocery delivery before, and some of those might stick around even after it becomes easier to resume old shopping habits again.
Another consumer name she’ll be watching out for is Poshmark, which enables people to buy and sell clothes from each other online. The company publicly filed for an IPO on Dec. 17, and was valued at $625 million in a 2017 funding round, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing PitchBook data.
“You can imagine that buying clothes might be something people would do less of during the pandemic,” Gupta said, but “positive news around an end to the pandemic potentially next year” is one factor that could impact investor expectations for how a business like Poshmark could perform as a public company.
Dating-app maker Bumble could also be headed for the public markets, after a strong year for rival Match Group Inc. MTCH, 0.92%. The company has reportedly filed confidential IPO paperwork, according to Bloomberg News, with aims for a February offering. Bumble has been trying to expand beyond the world of online dating with offshoots that let people make networking connections or search for platonic friendships, as the world of online dating is changed by the pandemic.
Financial technology
Robinhood helped make a new generation of investors interested in IPOs, and now the company looks likely to head down the public path itself. The company has reportedly picked Goldman Sachs to lead preparations for a 2021 IPO, according to Reuters. The company fetched a $11.7 billion private-market valuation in September.
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase also is expected to seek an IPO amid strong recent rallies for cryptos like bitcoin in recent months. The company fetched a $7.7 billion private-market valuation in October 2018, according to Crunchbase, and announced a confidential IPO filing on Dec. 17.
“Given that companies such as Robinhood and Coinbase are seeing tailwinds through the recession and through the pandemic,” their stories could become “much more compelling,” MKM’s Kulkarni told MarketWatch.
The buy-now-pay-later trend gained steam in the U.S. as well during the COVID-19 crisis, and that might play out in the IPO market as well. Affirm, which enables consumers to make online purchases in installments, has already filed IPO paperwork. Klarna, a Swedish rival whose investors include Visa Inc. V, -0.61%, may follow in 2021. The company might “do a Spotify SPOT, -2.01% -type thing” and direct-list shares in the U.S., said Santosh Rao, the head of research at Manhattan Venture Partners.
Online-lending company SoFi could also come public, though CNBC reported that the company is looking into the SPAC route. The company, headed by former Twitter Inc. TWTR, -5.33% executive and Goldman Sachs banker Anthony Noto, got its start allowing people to refinance student loans and obtained a $4.8 billion private-market valuation in 2019. SoFi, which is short for Social Finance, has since branched into other areas of financial services, including mortgages and investing.
Stripe, one of the biggest unicorns, finds a place on IPO lists year after year for its sheer size, though Bloomberg News reported in November that the company is reportedly in talks to raise additional funds through the private markets that could value the company at more than $70 billion. Stripe, which enables businesses to accept payments online, was last valued at $36 billion in an April funding round.
Software
While Airbnb and DoorDash took the IPO stage late in the year, the initial boom in pandemic tech offerings belonged to software companies like Snowflake and Unity Software Inc. U, -4.06%. Experts expect many more software startups will be looking for similar riches in 2021, after products like Zoom Video Communications Inc. ZM, -1.68% received higher profiles amid stay-at-home orders.
“COVID is shining a light on companies that are selling software,” EquityZen’s Haslett said, and more businesses in this area could come public next year. Cybersecurity was always a hot area, but he sees another tailwind now that more people are working from home and logging into accounts remotely.
Tanium, a company that makes endpoint-security software, is among the top software candidates for 2021, according to Rao. “Endpoint security is very important especially with all this remote working,” he said. The company announced a new $150 million funding round in October that it said lifted its valuation to over $9 billion.
UiPath, which makes software for robotic process automation, cracks the shortlist for both Rao and Kulkarni. The company was valued at $10.2 billion through a July funding round, and reaching that threshold “feels like last-money-in before a public-market valuation,” Kulkarni said.
Education tech
Another area having its moment during the COVID-19 crisis is education technology, but there aren’t a lot of public ways to play the trend, said Kevin Landis, the chief investment officer of Firsthand Capital Management. While the educational status quo has been “firmly entrenched” for a long time, the pandemic may prove a tipping point.
Education is “a big, high dam that feels like it needs to break at some point and if it doesn’t after this, it feels like it may not happen in our lifetime,” he told MarketWatch.
Investors may get more public plays on digital educational tools in the year ahead, with Rao listing online-course provider Udemy among potential IPO candidates. The company “has some critical mass at this point,” he said, as it boasts 35 million students, and it got a vote of confidence in November when Tencent Holdings Ltd. 700, +3.14% made an investment that valued the company at more than $3 billion, Bloomberg reported.
EquityZen lists fellow online-course company Coursera on its list of potential IPO candidates. The company raised $130 million in a July funding round, according to The Information.
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>>> Stripe to Offer Citi, Goldman Accounts Through E-Commerce Giants
Bloomberg
By Jennifer Surane
December 3, 2020
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-03/stripe-to-offer-citi-goldman-accounts-through-e-commerce-giants
Online stores to have access to checking accounts, services
‘Business banking has largely been left behind,’ Stripe says
Stripe Inc. will team up with some of the world’s largest banks to offer checking accounts to businesses that sell their wares on e-commerce platforms such as Shopify Inc.
Stripe said banks including Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Barclays Plc will now be able to offer checking accounts and other financial services through e-commerce providers. If a coffee shop, for instance, uses Shopify to sell mugs and coffee beans online, it will now be able to open a bank account too.
“Everything about running an online business has been transformed by technology, but business banking has largely been left behind,” Karim Temsamani, head of banking and financial products at Stripe, said in a statement. “But we’re changing this.”
Businesses use Stripe’s software to accept online payments, and the company has benefited during the pandemic as people stuck at home have relied more heavily on e-commerce to do their shopping. The company is in talks to raise a new funding round that could value it at as much as $100 billion, Bloomberg reported last month.
For online firms, setting up a bank account takes an average of seven days, Stripe said. Almost a quarter of businesses ultimately have to send a fax to open the account, and more than half need to visit a bank branch. With its latest offering, which will be known as Stripe Treasury, the company is seeking to disrupt all that.
Still, Stripe is relying on established banks for the service.
“Our vision is for this partnership to fuel global commerce by enabling Stripe to launch the next-generation banking proposition for their clients,” Manish Kohli, global head of payments and receivables in Citigroup’s treasury and trade solutions business, said in the statement.
Stripe’s plans were reported earlier Thursday by the Wall Street Journal.
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>>> IPOs to watch in 2021: The 5 most anticipated debuts
Yahoo Finance
by Daniel Howley and Melody Hahm
December 23, 2020
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/2021-ipo-market-roblox-affirm-atotech-petco-southeastern-grocers-201607439.html
Despite the near-constant upheaval caused by the coronavirus pandemic, 2020 will go down as one of the best performing years for initial public offerings (IPOs). Over the last 12 months, a stunning 216 companies went public, the most since 2014, with firms raising an astonishing $78.1 billion in the process.
Consistent with previous years, healthcare and technology were the most popular sectors of the IPO market. Airbnb (ABNB), Doordash (DASH), Snowflake (SNOW), Lufax Holding (LU), and Royalty Pharma (RPRX) were the largest companies to go public this year.
And 2021 looks like it could be just as good for public debuts, according to Kathleen Smith, IPO ETF manager at Renaissance Capital.
“As long as the market holds up, we could very likely see a better year in 2021 than we saw in 2020,” Smith told Yahoo Finance. While the IPO market started out strong in 2020, the pipeline essentially closed down in March because of the pandemic before picking up steam again in the second half of the year. Momentum looks promising heading into the new year, assuming the Federal Reserve’s easy money policy stays intact for the foreseeable future.
Overall, this year’s slate of public offerings performed extraordinarily well during and after their IPOs. The Renaissance IPO ETF (IPO) is up 119% this year compared to the S&P’s overall 14.3% gain, logging its best year ever. The average return on a U.S. IPO this year was 75.4%, compared to last year’s 24.4% and 2018’s -1.9% loss.
With two COVID-19 vaccines now authorized in the U.S., one potential shift is a so-called return to normalcy that may not favor growth-oriented healthcare and tech companies, and instead may benefit cyclical names that aren’t as high-flying. “We can’t be so sure that the tech IPOs will be the ones at the top of the 2021 list. The minute there’s any kind of worry, markets correct and deals get priced more conservatively and they don’t get done,” Smith said.
2021’s big-name companies range from communication services and consumer discretionary to fintech and materials. Juggernauts like gaming platform Roblox, buy-now-pay-later retailer Affirm, and chemicals and equipment company Atotech are each poised to raise as much as $1 billion. And there are plenty of other firms waiting in the wings.
Roblox (RBLX)
If you’ve got children, you know Roblox. The online gaming platform, valued at $4 billion, allows users to create and publish their own video games using Roblox’s tool set. It’s part creation, part play, and expected to hit the public market next year. Founded in 2004 by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel, the company makes money through the sale of its Robux in-game currency.
Roblox’s S-1 indicates the company, along with the rest of the gaming industry, has experienced rapid growth in users and revenue, but its losses have ballooned in lockstep.
In the nine-month period ending in September, Roblox had 31.1 million daily active users, an 82% increase from the same period a year ago. Revenue hit $589 million, but its net losses totaled $203 million, four-and-a-half times the $46 million it lost in the same period of 2019.
Roblox, which was widely expected to debut in December, delayed its move into the public markets after Doordash and Airbnb made it difficult for the video game company to price its shares, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Smith says the firm should see a huge amount of interest from investors.
“I look at Roblox and, although they are losing money, they have positive cash flow and it’s a $1 billion-plus IPO, so I think investors are going to pay attention to that,” Smith said.
Affirm Holdings (AFRM)
Affirm Holdings, like Roblox, was expected to IPO in December 2020. However, it delayed the move until at least January 2021 after Doordash and Airbnb saw massive pops during their public offerings.
The company, which could see its valuation top out at $10 billion, is part of a growing number of buy-now-pay-later services that provides 0% interest or simple interest loans for consumers looking to purchase everything from shoes to exercise bikes.
Founded in 2012, the company is still losing money, posting net losses of $120.5 million and $112.6 million in 2019 and 2020, respectively, according to its S-1. Still, Affirm, which was founded by Paypal co-founder Max Levchin, is likely to see its IPO raise billions of dollars.
“The company is losing money and I think, although it’s growing really fast, these types of companies are like payday lenders,” Smith said. “They have some things investors have to pay attention to when it comes to rules and regulations.”
Atotech (ATC)
Initially expected to IPO in the first half of 2020, Carlyle Group-owned Atotech delayed its debut due to the coronavirus pandemic and fears that it would hurt its valuation. The company makes specialty chemicals and equipment found in everything from smartphones to communications infrastructure.
The German firm filed its F-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission in January 2020, reporting consolidated net losses of $23.7 million in 2018 on $1.2 billion in revenue. In the nine months ending in September 2019, though, the firm saw net income of $12 million on $877 million in revenue, and its IPO deal could top out at $1 billion.
Of course, the company will also have to contend with variables in the broader tech industry including the whims of consumers and enterprises purchase cycles for electronics infrastructure.
Petco (WOOF)
It’s where the pets go, and in 2021, it’s where investors will go, too. The pet retail giant Petco is set to go public in 2021 with a deal worth as much as $800 million. Founded in 1965, the company was last publicly traded in 2006 and has since been owned by private equity investors.
In the company’s S-1, CEO Ron Coughlin goes even further, saying: “Petco has grown from a local veterinary supplies shop to a disruptive, fully integrated, digital-led, comprehensive pet care ecosystem that puts the health and wellness of pets first.”
That’s a fancy way of saying you can get virtually everything you need for your pets from the retailer. And judging by online pet retailer Chewy’s (CHWY) stellar performance since going public in June 2019 — up 107% — Petco thinks the demand for pet products will only continue to grow.
The company, which will be delightfully listed as WOOF, has seen its profitability improve as of late. Net losses in 2018 came in at $413 million, but fell to $103 million in 2019. Net sales in the same period rose from $4.39 billion in 2018 to $4.43 billion in 2019.
Southeastern Grocers (SEGR)
Southeastern Grocers, which operates 420 supermarkets under the Winn-Dixie, Harveys, and Fresco y Más names, is an interesting addition to this list because it only emerged from bankruptcy in May 2018. In its S-1, the company says its overall financial performance was hurt by its aggressive expansion from 2011 through 2015, which saw its store base expand by 256%.
Since then, its profitability has improved with the company reporting a net loss of $62 million in the 28 weeks that ended July 10, 2018, only to turn that into net income of $205 million in the 28 weeks that ended July 8, 2020.
Now a leaner organization, Southeastern Grocers is seeking to IPO in 2021 and could raise as much as $500 million.
The future pipeline
While many of these companies are looking to hit the public exchanges in the traditional way, 2020 was a banner year for alternative ways to go public — namely, the SPAC (special purpose acquisition company). Two hundred and forty one SPACs raised $73.4 billion. While household names are likely to pursue a traditional IPO or even a direct listing, those looking for a quicker liquidity option will consider these so-called blank check companies to take them public.
Investors should expect to see alternative means of going public remain prominent in 2021. “Private companies like Paysafe and Opendoor took advantage of the speed and price certainty that the SPAC structure offers during an uncertain market. Now, companies have more options than ever when they pursue a public listing with SPACs and direct listings both emerging as ‘mainstream’ options,” according to pre-IPO marketplace EquityZen.
Aside from the aforementioned five that are almost surely going to go public in 2021, there’s a slew of other hotly anticipated debuts of companies that have become household names. Payments platform Stripe, grocery delivery startup Instacart, stock trading app Robinhood Markets, residential real estate brokerage Compass, dating app Bumble, online education platform Coursera, and fashion players ThredUp and Poshmark are all readying their market debuts.
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Short down to $130
>>> Stripe chases $100bn valuation with no sign of IPO
FinTech Futures
by Ruby Hinchliffe
1st December 2020
https://www.fintechfutures.com/2020/12/stripe-chases-100bn-valuation-with-no-sign-of-ipo/
Stripe, with its last private valuation standing at $36 billion, is reportedly chasing a new valuation of up to $100 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Co-founded by Irish brothers, Patrick and John Collison, Stripe could see its valuation quadruple in just two years.
Its latest funding round – the value of which is yet to be disclosed – follows a $600 million funding round just seven months ago. Stripe’s total money raised to date is almost $2 billion, according to PitchBook data.
But Stripe is still a private company, and there is no talk of it holding an initial public offering (IPO) – prompting speculation that the brothers, worth $4.3 billion each, are putting it off.
The company did, however, hire Dhivya Suryadevara – formerly General Motors – as its new chief financial officer (CFO) this year.
A crazy valuation?
At $100 billion, that would make Stripe the most valuable venture-backed start-up in the US, according to CB Insights.
Axios points out that Chinese firm, ByteDance’s divestment of its majority stake in TikTok had cleared on Friday, which paves the way for Stripe to be a record-breaker.
It is possible that the latest funding won’t happen, or that it will happen, but at a lower valuation.
Regardless, there is logic behind such an inflated valuation for the payments processing software provider.
COVID-19 has caused e-commerce sales to skyrocket, seeing Stripe benefit from the industry’s anticipated 20% growth in 2020. That’s according to IBM’s US Retail Index.
But it’s clear there’s still major room for growth too. Forbes quoted two years ago that less than 10% of global commerce happens online.
Which is why Stripe has since bought Nigerian company, Paystack, for $200 million. It also led a $12 million round for Manila-based PayMongo.
And as its public competitors – Square, PayPal, and Ayden among them – are seeing their stocks as much as double and triple this year, it’s unsurprising that Stripe’s value is in turn driven up.
This year has also continued the trend of Stripe not only serving start-ups, but also working with enterprise industry names.
Zoom, Just Eat, media group NBC and toy-maker Mattel all made the list of new clients. They join the likes of Amazon, Salesforce, Lyft and Instacart.
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Name | Symbol | % Assets |
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Zoom Video Communications Inc | ZM | 8.95% |
Uber Technologies Inc | UBER | 8.80% |
Coinbase Global Inc Ordinary Shares - Class A | COIN | 6.52% |
CrowdStrike Holdings Inc Class A | CRWD | 6.11% |
Pinterest Inc | PINS | 5.05% |
Peloton Interactive Inc | PTON | 4.73% |
Slack Technologies Inc Class A | WORK | 3.98% |
Avantor Inc | AVTR | 3.00% |
Roblox Corp Ordinary Shares - Class A | RBLX | 2.82% |
Royalty Pharma PLC Class A | RPRX | 2.67% |
Name | Symbol | % Assets |
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Snap Inc Class A | SNAP | 9.20% |
Uber Technologies Inc | UBER | 5.63% |
Marvell Technology Inc | MRVL | 4.69% |
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc | TMO | 3.36% |
Dow Inc | DOW | 3.27% |
Tradeweb Markets Inc | TW | 2.49% |
Corteva Inc | CTVA | 2.48% |
Keurig Dr Pepper Inc | KDP | 2.48% |
Dell Technologies Inc Class C | DELL | 2.30% |
Corning Inc | GLW | 2.12% |
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