According to information on the matter, grocery delivery company Instacart Inc. has confidentially filed for an initial public offering.
More on the upcoming IPO of Instacart
A listing could happen this year though timing can be delayed as per people who did not wish to be identified as the information is confidential. According to them, deliberations are continuing, and the company may remain privately held.
The San Francisco-based grocery delivery platform is working with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs on the IPO.
Instacart, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs representatives did not elicit any response.
Instacart, a beneficiary during the coronavirus pandemic, has been struggling lately to keep up the growth. This year in March, they announced cutting down the company’s valuation by 40% to $24 billion, as reported by Bloomberg News. The company was earlier valued at $39 billion in March 2021 with a funding round from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, D1 Capital Partners, T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., and Fidelity Management & Research Co.
The public debut of Instacart can come up at a time when the stock market is facing turbulent times. This year only two IPO of more than $500 million have achieved pricing in the U.S. 52 companies, excluding blank cheque firms, have raised $4.4 billion in 2022 so far as compared to 201 listings worth more than $71 billion during the same period in 2021 as per data compiled by Bloomberg.
The performance of newly listed public companies has been disappointing. The Renaissance IPO ETF, which invests in companies that went public in the last two years, is already down by 48% in the past year.
Instacart Inc. underwent several changes in its management in the last year. Fidji Simo, a former executive with Meta Platforms Inc., joined the company as Chief Executive Officer, and Nick Giovanni, a former banker with Goldman Sachs Group Inc., joined as Chief Financial Officer. Both the appointments happened in the past 18 months. The president, Carolyn Everson, stepped down in December 2021.
