Grocery delivery service Instacart has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) to list stock on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker symbol “CART.”
The company, which filed the IPO under the name Maplebear, did not disclose the number of shares or the expected price range in its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.
According to IPOScoop.com, however, the IPO could come as soon as September and fetch up to $1 billion in new funding for the company.
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In its filing, the company offered a first look at its financials. It said that for the six months ended June 30, revenue increased 31% to $1.48 billion, on net income of $242 million, compared to a net loss of $74 million in the year-ago period. For the year ended December 31, 2022, revenue grew 39.1% to $2.55 billion, on net income of $428 million, compared with a net loss of $73 million in the same year-ago period.
COVID helped to boost scale, profits
“Starting in March 2020 and through the first quarter of 2022, our growth was significantly accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the company said in the filing. “While we do not expect our pandemic-accelerated growth rates to recur in future periods, our growth during this period helped establish a business with much greater scale and much higher gross profit.”
Instacart also disclosed that PepsiCo has agreed to purchase $175 million of Series A redeemable convertible preferred stock in a private placement, contingent on the close of the offering.
Other investors that have indicated an interest in participating in the IPO are Norges Bank Investment Management, a division of Norges Bank, and entities affiliated with venture capital firms TCV and Sequoia Capital as well as with hedge funds D1 Capital Partners and Valiant Capital Management, per the filing.
Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan are listed as the lead underwriters for the IPO.
The company names several competitors in its filing including Amazon, Target, Shipt, Walmart, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Gopuff and Thrive Market.
Instacart said that most consumers choose to shop at brick-and-mortar grocery stores, “regardless of whether we partner with the retailers that operate these stores.” The consumer cost to switch between online grocers is low, Instacart said.
“Consumers within various demographics have a propensity to shift to the lowest-cost or highest-quality provider and may use more than one delivery platform,” the company said.
Founded in 2012, Instacart said it serves more than 1,400 national, regional and local retail banners with more than 80,000 stores that represent over 85% of the U.S. grocery market.
The IPO filing came on the same day that marketing automation platform company Klaviyo filed to go public and just days after Softbank’s semiconductor design firm Arm Holdings filed, in a sign that the IPO market may finally be heating up.
The IPO market remained a ghost town after a stellar 2021, with last year one of the worst on record, as Kiplinger recently reported. While there has already been some improvement this year, the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank is a major factor in depressing recent deal activity, as reported.
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