Online grocery-delivery company Instacart (CART) Today (September 19) made its long-awaited debut on the Nasdaq. Shares were trading at $30 each, up 40 percent, valuing the company at $14 billion at its peak today.
Instacart had filed to go public in May 2022, but delayed the actual listing late last year when the stock market was hit by high inflation and fears of a recession. It is one of the most popular technology companies in recent months The US IPO market is slowly reopening. After an 18-month hiatus and the first venture-backed IPO in over a year.
In the year Instacart, which was founded in 2012, experienced a 600% increase in business during the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Growth slowed as Covid subsided, but the company managed to maintain a viable business model. Instacart is set to become profitable for the first time in the second quarter of 2022, according to the company’s S-1 filing last month. In the latest quarter, it reported net income of $114 million, up from $8 million a year earlier.
Instacart valued its IPO at $10 billion, providing a nice exit for its early investors and founding employees. But in the year That’s down significantly from a peak of $39 billion in early 2021.
Key investors and individuals in the Instacart IPO
Venture capital powerhouse Sequoia and hedge funds D1 Capital Partners They are Instacart’s largest shareholders, owning 15 percent and 14 percent of the company before the IPO, according to Instacart’s S-1 filing. After the new share sale, their stakes fell to 14 percent and 13 percent, respectively.
Both Sequoia and D1 Capital invested in Instacart (Instacart) in a round that was enough to generate a positive return (although Sequoia participated in a round when Instacart valued it at $39 billion in 2021). Instacart was last valued at $10 billion in 2015. It was in 2018. Investors who jump in after that may suffer losses on their investments. Among them are private equity firms DST Global and General Catalyst, according to Pitchbook. Both participated in a 2020 round that valued Instacart at $13.8 billion.
Instacart’s other venture backers include Tiger Global Management and Coatu Management, according to Pitchbook.
Sequoia partner Ravi Gupta, who served as Instacart’s chief financial and operations officer from 2015 to 2019, and D1 Capital founder Daniel Sondhim both sit on Instacart’s board of directors.
The company’s three founders – Apoorva Mehta, Brandon Leonardo and Maxwell Mullen – together owned 17 percent of the company before the IPO. Mehta, Instacart’s former CEO, owns 11 percent, while Leonardo and Mullen own 3 percent each.
All three founders and several early employees took the opportunity of the IPO to cash out some of their founding equity.
Leonardo and Mullen each sold 1.5 million shares today, while Mehta sold 700,000 shares. Instacart’s chief technology officer, Mark Schaaf, sold about half of his company’s stake, 300,000 shares. An unnamed group of former employees, including those in executive, product and engineering roles, sold 3.2 million shares in the IPO, according to Instacart’s S-1 filing.
Mehta will step down as Instacart’s CEO in 2021, replacing former Facebook executive Fidji Simon. After that, Mehta took over the role of Chairman of the Board of the company. He handed over that role to Simo as well to handle other tasks after the IPO.
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Read the original story Instacart’s $10 billion IPO: Winners, losers and other key players and others in CC Cao as if Observer.
