Tag: “Warby Parker”

04 October 2021 – Oyo Eyes $1.16bn Initial Public Offering

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The Big Ones

Oyo, an India-based accommodation platform backed by corporates Airbnb, Didi Chuxing, Hero Enterprise, Huazhu Hotels Group, Microsoft and SoftBank, filed for a $1.16bn initial public offering. The company will issue up to $942m in new shares while the rest will come from secondary transactions involving existing investors. Telecommunications and internet group SoftBank plans to divest more than $175m of its stake. Founded in 2013, Oyo has built an online platform that helps users book short-term accommodation in locations including India, the US, the UK, Japan and other countries in Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

Warby Parker, a US-headquartered eyewear retailer backed by payment services firm American Express, went public in a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The company set a reference price of $40.00 for its shares, which opened at $54.05 and closed at $54.49, equating to a market capitalisation just over $6.1bn. No new shares were issued and none of its largest shareholders have disclosed sales. Founded in 2010, Warby Parker sells eyewear both through its online platform and a network of brick-and-mortar outlets. The company increased revenue 53% year on year to just over $270m for the first six months of 2021 and cut its net loss from $10m to $7.3m in the process.

India-based online reselling platform Meesho amassed $570m in funding at a $4.9bn valuation from investors including social network operator Facebook, internet and telecommunications group SoftBank and internet group Prosus. Investment and financial services group Fidelity and investment firm B Capital Group co-led the round, which also featured Footpath Ventures and Trifecta Capital. SoftBank tapped its Vision Fund 2 to participate in the round while Prosus, which was formed by media and e-commerce group Naspers, was represented by its corporate venturing unit, Prosus Ventures. Founded in 2015, Meesho runs an online platform that lets small businesses and entrepreneurs sell products to consumers through social media.

Online food ordering service Delivery Hero led a $950m series C round for Germany-based grocery delivery service Gorillas. The round included internet group Tencent, investment management firm Coatue Management, investment firm DST Global and venture capital firm A-Star Partners, and reportedly valued the startup at $3bn. Founded in 2020, Gorillas offers groceries to customers in 57 cities across eight European countries for delivery within 10 minutes of an order, selling items at retail price.

Fanatics Trading Cards, a subsidiary of US-based digital sports memorabilia retailer Fanatics, closed a $350m series A round featuring talent agency Endeavor. Private equity firm Silver Lake and growth equity firm Insight Partners also participated in the round, which valued the company at $10.4bn, according to the Wall Street Journal. Fanatics Trading Cards provides a direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketplace that helps rightsholders and fans sell, resell or buy cards affiliated with professional sports leagues including Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association and the National Football League.

Crossover

Oxford Nanopore, the UK-based DNA sequencing technology developer backed by corporate investors Nikon, Tencent, Amgen and Illumina, went public in a $478m initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange. The company issued 82.4 million shares priced at £4.25 ($5.81) each, securing a valuation of $4.7bn, while shareholders including commercialisation firm IP Group offloaded $238m worth of stock. Software producer Oracle had already committed to being a cornerstone investor for the IPO, putting aside $205m. Oxford Nanopore’s shares soared 45% on the first day of trading. Founded in 2005, Oxford Nanopore provides DNA and RNA sequencing technology that has been applied to a wide range of products ranging from handheld devices to population-scale platforms.

Funds

Energize Ventures, a US-based venture capital offshoot of power producer Invenergy, closed a $330m second fund featuring a host of corporate investors as limited partners (LPs). Invenergy anchored the fund and was joined by backers including energy management technology producer Schneider Electric’s SE Ventures vehicle and industrial and power equipment maker General Electric’s GE Renewable Energy subsidiary. Energy utilities American Electric Power, Equinor (through its Equinor Ventures subsidiary) and Xcel Energy also committed capital, as did financial services firm Credit Suisse, pension fund manager Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and property investment trust Hannon Armstrong. Formed in 2016, Energize Ventures has over $700m under management and targets energy technology developers focusing on process automation, decentralisation, risk mitigation, electrification and asset optimisation.

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

31 August 2020 – Ant Group Files for Dual Listing to Potentially Raise $30bn

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The Big Ones

Cancer test developer Freenome has closed a $270m series C round that included Novartis and existing backers GV, Kaiser Permanente Ventures and Roche Venture Fund to hike its overall funding to $507m. The capital will be allocated to a clinical study for a blood test Freenome is developing for colorectal cancer screening, in addition to advancing additional oncology blood tests.

American Family Ventures was formed by insurer American Family in 2013 to invest in areas like insurance, financial services, big data and cybersecurity technology, and it’s following a recent trend by recruiting external limited partners for its latest fund. AFV Fund III has closed at $213m and its LPs will also be able to gain value through a scheme called AFV Platform that will be able to link them to portfolio companies and fellow investors.

Ant Group has officially filed for a dual listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai that could potentially raise $30bn – a figure that would equate to the largest initial public offering for a VC-backed company in history. It will reportedly now speak to underwriters and other stakeholders to determine the details of the flotations, which are expected to value it between $200bn and $300bn. Apart from Alibaba, corporates including China Post and China Life are also among its investors, both having backed it at a $60bn valuation in 2016.

Crossover: Kymeta, a US-based satellite broadband provider exploiting foundational research from Duke University, secured $85m in a funding round led by entrepreneur Bill Gates, with the backing of some of Kymeta’s leadership team. Kymeta has raised more than $282m in funding altogether, satellite operator Intelsat having contributed to a $73.5m round in 2017 together with undisclosed additional investors. Media group Liberty Global had joined Osage University Partners, Bill Gates, Lux Capital and Kresge Foundation in Kymeta’s $50m series C round in 2013. And Kymeta had already secured $12m in funding from Liberty Global, Lux Capital and Gates the year before.

Deals

Consumer companies have had a mixed at best time of it during the coronavirus pandemic but eyewear e-commerce platform Warby Parker has done quite well, raising $245m across series F and G rounds while hiking its valuation from $1.75bn in late 2018 to $3bn today. The company’s earlier investors include American Express Ventures and the latest round increased its overall funding to $535m.

Viva Republica, the creator of money management app Toss, has raised its own nine-figure round, pulling in $173m in a round that reportedly took its valuation from $2.2bn to $2.6bn. The company’s total funding now stands at $530m, its earlier investors including Novel Group, PayPal and Qualcomm Ventures. The funding will help it grow Toss into a more diversified finance-focused app that includes financial product recommendations.

Mural, developer of an online visual collaboration platform, has closed an $118m series B round that included Slack Fund and returning backer Gradient Ventures. The round came just seven months after Mural’s series A funding, but its initial investment came all the way back in 2012 in a tiny round featuring another corporate venturing unit, Intel Capital.

Data collaboration software provider Daitaku has raised $100m in series D funding from investors including Alphabet’s CapitalG unit. The round followed a secondary investment from CapitalG in December that valued Daitaku at $1.4bn, and the company said it has maintained a unicorn valuation in the latest round. It has also now secured $246m in primary funding altogether.

Funds

This is going to be a quick one today: other than the American Family Ventures fundraiser we’ve already covered, it’s been a slow week for funds.

Exits

Things are really beginning to heat up as we pass through the summer lull to the traditional autumn rush and a good deal of activity is focused on the public markets. Chinese smart electric carmaker Xpeng has floated in the US in an upsized $1.5bn initial public offering valuing it above $21bn. Alibaba and Xiaomi were among the Xpeng investors considering buying $400m of shares in the IPO, and its backers also include Foxconn, UCar and Douwan Entertainment.

The sheer scale of Ant’s forthcoming listing casts a large shadow, enough to almost make you forget what a big story it is that data analysis provider Palantir has also filed to go public. The Relx, Fujitsu and Sompo Holdings-backed company is eschewing an IPO in favour of a direct listing, following the likes of Spotify and Slack. It was valued above $20bn in 2016 but regardless of whether it’s maintained that valuation (and there are doubts about that), it will be one of the year’s biggest listings in a year set to be full of them.

Cloud data software provider Snowflake is another hugely valued tech company to file for an initial public offering, six months after closing a $479m series G round at a valuation exceeding $12bn. Salesforce Ventures was among the participants in that round but Capital One Growth Ventures got in earlier, backing its 2017 series D at a reported $500m valuation. It isn’t among Snowflake’s largest shareholders but it should be in for a bumper exit nonetheless.

Although a lot of companies are filing for IPOs, lidar technology developer Luminar has taken a different route, agreeing to a reverse merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Gores Metropoulos that will give it a Nasdaq listing and an expected valuation of $3.4bn. The deal is being boosted by $170m of financing from a syndicate including Van Tuyl Companies and Volvo Cars Tech Fund, the latter – like fellow corporates Corning and Cornes- an existing Luminar investor. Expect more of these kinds of deals, judging by the volume of SPACs entering the public markets of late.

In fact, another company to follow the SPAC route is 3D metal printer producer Desktop Metal, which will list on the New York Stock Exchange through a reverse merger with a SPAC called Trine Acquisition Corp. The combined business is set to be valued at $2.5bn, Desktop Metal having previously raised $438m from investors including Koch Industries, Alphabet, Panasonic, Techtronic Industries, Ford, Saudi Aramco, Lowe’s, BMW and Stratasys.

All these IPO and reverse merger deals have perhaps obscured the fact the M&A market seems to be doing quite well too. Fastly has agreed to buy web security application provider Signal Sciences for $200m in cash and $575m in stock, and the transaction will come after about $62m in funding. That money came from investors including O’Reilly Media’s OATV unit, which is in for a tasty exit having backed it in every round since its $2m seed funding.

Kymera Therapeutics raised almost $174m in its initial public offering on Friday, pricing its shares above their range before seeing them soar by 66% after their first day of trading. The small-molecule drug developer had previously received nearly $220m in funding from investors including corporate venturing units Amgen Ventures, Lilly Ventures, Pfizer Ventures, MRL Ventures Fund and Sanofi Ventures.

Israeli digital X-ray device developer Nano-X Imaging has also floated in the US, in a $165m IPO that scored exits for corporate investors SK Telecom, iA Financial, Foxconn and Fujifilm. The company priced its shares at the top of the range and their subsequent rise almost doubled its valuation from its last pre-IPO funding round, which closed in June this year.

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