17 August 2020 – Impossible Foods Closes $200m Series G

The Big Ones

A lot of brick-and-mortar retailers have suffered during coronavirus lockdowns in recent months but certain parts of the e-commerce sector have done very well. That includes online sports apparel retailer Fanatics, whose business is reportedly 30% up year on year and which has raised $350m in a series E round that hiked its valuation from $4.5bn to $6.2bn. SoftBank Vision Fund led its last round in 2017, and the company’s earlier backers also include Alibaba.

Israel-based medical technology fund Alive HealthTech Fund has raised $150m, including $50m from four anchor investors including healthcare provider Carillon Clinics and health maintenance organisation (HMO) Maccabi Healthcare Service. The other two were Leumi Partners, the investment banking subsidiary of financial services firm Bank Leumi, which put up $10m, and Consensus Business Group, the investment vehicle for entrepreneur Vincent Tchenguiz. Maccabi Healthcare contributed through its Maccabi Fund. Alive HealthTech is concentrating on growth-stage investments in medical technology developers and intends to lead 10 to 15 rounds by 2024 sized between $10m and $30m, providing $5m to $10m for each company. The vehicle was formed by Maccabi Healthcare, care provider Assuta and Tchenguiz’s CBG Asset Management firm in partnership with chairman Ascher Shmulewitz and Michel Habib, Tchenguiz’s Israeli representative. The founding partners jointly provided $50m for the fund.

Online lending and wealth management platform Lufax may be dialling back its peer-to-peer lending services but its user base still tops 40 million, and the Ping An spinoff has reportedly confidentially filed to raise up to $3bn in a US initial public offering. Several large Chinese companies have filed for offerings in the country which has to be a testament to the heated activity in those markets given they aren’t being put off by anti-Chinese rhetoric from the government or the prospect of regulations that will make them subject to US auditing rules.

Crossover news: Vegan burger and sausage producer Impossible Foods – founded in 2011 by Patrick Brown, then a professor of biochemistry at Stanford University – has closed a $200m series G round led by Coatue Management at a reported $4bn valuation. Alphabet’s GV subsidiary invested in Impossible back in 2014, and since then it has expanded into thousands of shops and restaurants courtesy of partnerships with chains like Burger King and The Hard Rock Cafe. It also sells direct to consumers online and it will use the latest round for R&D, manufacturing, increase its retail presence and international operations. It raised $500m in a series F round in March to be able to cope with an expected impact of the pandemic, but it’s actually achieved 60-fold growth since then as consumers avoided meat (probably in no small part due to well publicised Covid outbreaks in abattoirs and meat processing plants).

Deals

HMD Global secured the licence to manufacture smartphones and feature phones under the Nokia brand in 2016 and, after raising $100m in a Foxconn-backed series A round two years later, has added $230m in funding from Google, Qualcomm and Nokia itself. HMD is expanding from hardware into mobile carrier services, and the fact Google and Qualcomm have also recently pumped significant amounts into telecommunications operator and digital services provider Jio Platform suggests 5G is going to be the fuel for some big deals.

Gong has raised $200m in a series D round featuring Salesforce Ventures at a $2.2bn valuation, increasing its overall funding to more than $330m. The company has developed an analytics software platform for customer service interactions and is one of several in that area to have raised money of late, as more and more interactions become remote. Salesforce participated as a new investor but Cisco Investments had backed Gong since its series B round – one of three it’s notched up in the past 18 months.

Funds

Myanmar conglomerate UMG formed incubator and accelerator UMG Idealab in 2015 and it generally invests $50,000 to $1m at pre-seed to series A stage. Now however, its portfolio companies are moving to later stages and it is preparing to raise $100m for a fund that will support follow-on investments. It is looking to tap external backers and is seeking a close in 2022. That would also likely be the largest fund to be raised by a Mynamar-based corporate venturer.

Exits

KE Holdings, the Chinese company that combines real estate services providers Beike and Lianjia, floated in the United States on Thursday in a $2.12bn initial public offering that values it above $26bn. Some $330m of that amount consists of existing investors buying shares, with Tencent providing $160m of the total. SoftBank Vision Fund is also a notable shareholder while Baidu and several real estate developers are among its earlier investors.

A lot of tech companies have seen their business models validated by lockdown conditions but others are more vulnerable. Kabbage uses AI technology to process loans for small businesses, but with the wider economy in trouble it may see more and more customers default. That environment makes it ripe for an acquisition and American Express is reportedly in talks to buy it for up to $850m. That’s a lower valuation than its last two rounds but not dramatically so, and it would hand exits to SoftBank, UPS, Recruit, Santander, ING and Scotiabank

One of the most recent examples of that heat is primary care network Oak Street Health, which floated late last week and which has closed its IPO at $377m after its share price more than doubled. Health system Humana, which invested $50m in the company in September 2018, now owns a stake valued in excess of $550m.

Another Chinese company, silicon and semiconductor production services provider VeriSilicon Microelectronics, is meanwhile set to float on Shanghai’s Star Exchange in a $268m offering. Xiaomi will own 5.6% of VeriSilicon’s shares when the IPO closes while Intel Capital will own a 2.1% stake. Its investors also include Samsung Ventures.

Online retail software provider BigCommerce has shown the potential in the market, having closed its initial public offering at $249m on Friday just two days after it floated. The company, which counts Softbank Capital, Telstra Ventures and American Express Ventures among its investors, saw its shares skyrocket on their first day of trading, more than tripling in price by the day’s closed. Its share price is still around that mark today, giving it a market cap of roughly $4.9bn.

Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen spinout CureVac has had an eventful few months, pulling in $640m from investors including GlaxoSmithKline last month due to the prospect its messenger RNA technology could form the basis of a Covid-19 vaccine. The Germany-based company has now gone public in the US, in an initial public offering that topped $213m. GSK’s stake is now sized at 8.4%, and CureVac’s investors also include strategic partners Eli Lilly and Genmab.

Another China-based company, Shanghai SK Automation Technology, has gone public but unlike KE Holdings it is doing so in its home country, having raised $105m in an offering on Shanghai’s Star Market. SK Automation provides intelligent manufacturing technology and its backers include SAIC Capital, a subsidiary of carmaker and SK customer SAIC, which retains a 3.4% stake post-IPO.

As the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc throughout the world the IPO rush seems to be carrying on unabated. Xpeng, the smart electric carmaker also known as Xiaopeng Motors, has filed for an initial public offering in the US, having raised some $2.5bn in venture funding from investors including Alibaba, UCar, Foxconn, Xiaomi and Fosun. It has set $100m for a placeholder target but expect that to rise sharply when it comes to setting terms for the offering.

Checkmate Pharmaceuticals has gone public in a $75m initial public offering, floating in the middle of its range. The immuno-oncology therapy developer had previously raised $175m in funding from investors including Novo, and at a time when companies are floating above their range in upsized offerings that’s probably a disappointing result, especially with its shares having dropped from the IPO price.


“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

29 January 2018 – Ping An Insurance On a Roll

Deals

Ping An Insurance is on a roll. At the end of November, the insurance provider was gearing up for a $1bn IPO of Ping An Good Doctor, and now it has raised nearly $1bn for its medical data collection and analysis subsidiary Ping An Healthcare Management at a $8.8bn valuation.

Tencent continues to go from strength to strength in its corporate venturing activities, and is set to lead a $1bn round for Kuaishou, a photo and video sharing app that’s now become one of the key players in China’s livestreaming sector.

Mobike, the bike-sharing company, has raised $1bn in its latest funding round, according to press reports.

Another company that’s growing at a rapid pace is Katerra, the creator of an end-to-end construction services business. It was only founded around three years ago but has just raised $865m in a series D round led by SoftBank Vision Fund that valued it at a little over $3bn.

Orix has provided $60m of a $70m extension to peer-to-peer lending platform Dianrong’s series D round, which has been increased to $290m.

Snowflake Computing, a cloud data storage technology developer, has raised $263m in series E funding at a pre-money valuation of $1.5bn. Capital One Growth Ventures, which previously backed a $105m series D round in September 2017, returned for the round co-led by Sequoia, Iconiq Capital and Altimeter Capital.

Maxi Mobility, the on-demand ride provider that oversees Cabify and EasyTaxi in Iberia and Latin America, has raised $160m in a Rakuten Ventures-backed round that values it at $1.4bn.

Ring, the maker of a smart doorbell video system, is raising $160m at a valuation of nearly $1bn, according to a securities filing. The company most recently closed a $109m debt and equity round a year ago, with backers including mobile semiconductor producer Qualcomm, insurance firm American Family and real estate firm JF Shea and other prominent investors, such as Richard Branson.

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has paid $144m for a 6.3% stake in Indian renewable energy developer ReNew Power, valuing it at almost $2.3bn.

Immunotherapy developer Tmunity Therapeutics, a spinout from University of Pennsylvania, has closed a $100m series A round that added Gilead Sciences, Ping An, Ventures and Be The Match BioTherapies to existing backers including Lilly Asia Ventures as well as Penn itself.

Stem, a producer of scalable energy storage systems, has raised $80m from Activate Capital, Temasek and another Canadian pension investor, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, for the first close of its series D round.

Constellation Technology Ventures has also participated in a $75m round for PrecisionHawk, the developer of a drone control system for enterprises.

Funds

Cybersecurity software provider and internet company Qihoo 360 has formed a $156m venture fund in partnership with Beijing Cultural Center Fund that will invest in internet and media-focused companies.

ING, the Dutch financial services firm, has set its sights on sustainable businesses and launched a $123m fund specifically aimed at startups developing products and services with a positive environmental impact.

Orange, Edenred and JCDecaux meanwhile are recognising Africa as the next big market and have put their weight behind the $70m first close of a $123m fund that is being raised by Partech Ventures.

On GUV, University of Tokyo Edge Capital, a venture capital affiliate of University of Tokyo, has raised an initial ¥15.6bn ($143m) of a ¥25bn spinout-focused investment fund. The capital has been provided by unnamed, domestic financial services firms.

Exits

Figs, a US-based medical apparel producer backed by footwear brand Crocs, has raised $65m from diversified holding company Tulco and will use the capital to buy out existing investors, making Tulco the only external investor.

Digital media company Gree has exited Indonesia-based property listings portal UrbanIndo in an acquisition of undisclosed size by real estate portal 99.co. UrbanIndo received an undisclosed amount of seed funding from venture capital firm East Ventures in 2012 before adding an undisclosed sum in a 2013 series A round led by Gree’s corporate venturing unit, Gree Ventures.

Primary Data, a US-based data virtualisation software producer backed by computer technology provider Dell Technologies, is shutting down after failing to attract enough clients.

Home24, a Germany-based online home and living product retailer backed by e-commerce holding group Rocket Internet, is gearing up for an initial public offering.

Entertainment company Modern Times Group MTG (MTG) secured an exit from France-based media group Trace as TPG Growth, part of private equity group TPG, acquired a majority stake.


“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0