Keep an Eye On
Anticipation for the Box IPO will continue to mount, after it was announced this week that the company has instead raised $150 million from private investors TPG and Coatue Management. The latest round of funding values the company at around $2.4 billion, up from the $2 billion valuation it received when it closed its Series F in December. This form of late-stage, growth-equity funding is nothing new to TPG, which has similarly invested in Airbnb and Uber. As for the web storage company, it publicly filed for an IPO in March, but is waiting until after Labor Day, when investor enthusiasm for technology stocks should increase, to follow through, sources say. The announcement was also accompanied by the company’s first quarter financials. Despite doubling revenue to $45.3 million, losses were up thirteen percent from the previous year. Box has yet to turn a profit.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the Alibaba IPO, which could be the biggest ever, will in fact happen some time in mid-August. This came on the heels of news that Tango, a mobile messaging app company that raised $280 million in a Series D round led by Alibaba, has moved into a 55,000 square foot Mountain View, Calif. office. The Tango deal is the highest profile American investment for the company to date, which in the fall set up an American investment team to help it compete with Amazon and eBay when it decides to challenge the domestic e-commerce market.
Filed
Yodlee, Inc., a fifteen year old Redwood City, Calif.-based cloud services platform for online banking, has filed its S-1, hoping to raise as much as $75 million in an IPO. Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch will lead the underwriting, while the stock will trade on Nasdaq under the YDLE ticker symbol. The company has raised nearly $125 million in VC since 1999. Investors like Warburg Pincus (owner of a 37.5% pre-IPO stake), Bank of America (12.71%), Institutional Venture Partners (12.61%), and Accel Partners (9.25%) stand to benefit from the process.
Following a trend set by competitors Tremor and YuMe, it was announced Tuesday that video ad-buying platform TubeMogul will go public, with pricing expected to happen some time next week. After seeing first quarter revenue grow almost 130 percent (from $9.58 million to $22.02 million) and losses decrease, the Emeryville, CA-based company plans to raise $75 million, by selling 6.3 million shares in the $11-$13 range. Backers like Trinity Ventures (26.5 percent of pre-IPO company), Foundation Capital (22.7 percent), and Northgate Capital (8 percent) have contributed over $50 million in VC funding. BofA Merrill Lynch, Citi, and RBC Capital Markets will serve as joint bookrunners.
ReWalk Robotics, an Israeli manufacturer of the only FDA-approved exoskeleton for paraplegics, has filed for an IPO. The company reported $1.6 million in revenue last year but plans to raise up to $57.5 million, having received FDA approval in June. The company will trade on the NYSE under the RWLK ticker symbol. Barclays and Jeffries will serve as book-running managers, with Canaccord Genuity acting as a co-manager.
China’s leading independent mobile game publishing platform, iDreamSky Technology Ltd., filed for an IPO last Thursday with the SEC. The five year old company behind games like FruitNinja, Subway Surfers, and TempleRun 2 intends to raise as much as $115 million. iDreamSky’s largest stakeholder is Tencent, currently behind only Google, Facebook, and Amazon as the fourth-largest Internet company by market cap, although it figures to be surpassed by Chinese counterpart Alibaba after its IPO later this summer. J.P. Morgan and Credit Suisse are set to act as lead underwriters.
Trainline, a British online rail ticket booking platform owned by Exponent Private Equity, has hired Morgan Stanley to manage an IPO that could raise as much as £400 million, according to Sky News. The company, which handles ticket sales for many of the UK’s major rail companies, was founded in 1999 and acquired by Exponent in 2006.