Industry News

FAT Brands Announces Closing of Its Initial Public Offering

Brands Inc. (“FAT Brands” or the “Company”) has completed its initial public offering under the National Securities Exchange Regulation A+ framework.
Co-branded with 72 Fatburger restaurants to date, Buffalo’s Express’ significant growth can be attributed to its high quality menu offerings and unparalleled dining experience.
You are urged to carefully review and consider any cautionary statements and other disclosures, including the statements made under the heading “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in the offering statement that we will file with the SEC.
An offering statement on Form 1-A relating to these securities has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and has become qualified. The securities offered by FAT Brands Inc. are highly speculative. Investing in shares of FAT Brands Inc. involves significant risks.

Singapore’s Game Startup Sea Raised $884 Million in New York IPO

Singapore’s Sea Ltd., Southeast Asia’s most valuable startup, raised about $884 million in its initial public offering in New York.
The company sold 59 million American depositary shares for $15 apiece, according to a statement Friday, offering more shares and pricing them above its initial range of $12 to $14 each. The total amount may be more than $1 billion if an option to sell additional shares is exercised, according to a person familiar with the matter, asking not to be identified because the matter is private.
Sea had a net loss of $165.2 million in the first half of the year on revenue of $195.5 million.
It was valued at $3.75 billion in its 2016 fundraising and will surpass $4 billion with the IPO.
“Sea is a future-looking investment,” Kai-Fu Lee, founder of Beijing-based Sinovation Ventures, said before the offering.
He rebranded the company to reflect its regional ambition and diversification.
Sea’s games business, which retained the Garena name, still accounts for more than 90 percent of total revenue.
They include the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund and several Asian billionaires.

Lyft Is Said to Explore I.P.O. as It Raises $1 Billion Led by Alphabet

SAN FRANCISCO — In an escalation of its ride-hailing war against Uber, Lyft has begun to explore going public in 2018 and is trying to strengthen its position by raising more capital, including $1 billion in new financing led by an investment arm of Google’s parent company.
Lyft has had talks with investment banks about an initial public offering next year, according to two people briefed on the discussions, who asked to remain anonymous because the conversations are confidential.
To bolster itself ahead of any public offering, Lyft on Thursday said it had raised $1 billion in financing led by CapitalG, a venture investment arm of Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet. The funding values Lyft at $10 billion before the introduction of new capital — a significant jump from the company’s last valuation of $6.9 billion.
The new investment further complicates the convoluted web of financial relationships in the ride-hailing industry, where companies like Lyft and Uber have hauled in enormous amounts of funding from firms that often put money into competing companies.
But the financing also gives Lyft a new and formidable partner in Alphabet.
A group of investors forced out Travis Kalanick, Uber’s co-founder and former chief executive, earlier this year over concerns that he was not fit to lead the company.
Lyft has benefited from Uber’s series of high-profile stumbles in recent months to lift its own profile.

Denver-based email company SendGrid files for initial public offering of stock

SendGrid on Thursday said it intends to make an initial public offering.
The Denver-based company known for handling billions of transactional messages like the Nextdoor notifications or Airbnb confirmation e-mails, filed a registration statement withe U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The number of shares and their price range have not yet been determined.
The fast-growing e-mail company, which went through the Boulder Techstars accelerator in 2009, has grown its business that handled e-mail transactions between consumers and, for example, Uber, to one with 42,000 paying customers that send out 1 billion e-mails per day.
“In 2017, we will be generating $100 million in revenue. We’re growing at 40 percent year to year and profitable, which is pretty significant for a SaaS (software as a service) company,” SendGrid spokesman David Friedman said last fall.

Ex-Googler’s startup gets funding to solve ‘online fashion’s oldest problem’

“I never know if it will fit me, I don’t have access to a fitting room,” are the thoughts going through online shoppers’ heads before they decide not to purchase, Kumar explains.
This data includes both publicly available brand size charts and banks of non-public information on sizing standards, customer trends, and behaviors of different types of fabric from clothes manufacturers and retailers around the world.
As Kumar explains, sizes can vary widely from region to region, and even from brand to brand.
“The trouble with this is that the consumer buys online on intuition, receives the garment, tries it on, and sends it back when it doesn’t fit,” says Kumar.
This means that someone visiting an online clothes store can select a garment, input their own size measurements, and get personalized suggestions from Pi on which size to go for based on their body size and shape, whether they want a loose or a snug fit, and the type of fabric the garment is made from.
But Kumar argues that Pixibo can offer something different for ecommerce companies.
Under this SaaS model, Pixibo signs clients up to a 12-month contract and charges a monthly license fee of “a few thousand dollars,” rather than pricing according to the number of sales each client makes.
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Vive La France: More Female Entrepreneurs Are Moving To Paris For Funding And Support

The young, business-friendly administration of French president Emanuel Macron’s commitment to gender equality and entrepreneurship, institutionalized public funding for entrepreneurs, and the increasing number of success stories involving female founders over the last few years have created a nurturing environment for female-led startups in France.
After that, L’Armoire à Beauté was supported by Paris Pionnières, the oldest incubator in Europe for female founders, which was established 12 years ago with the help of regional government (Île-de-France).
The founder Niel recently told President Macron that the F in Station F stands for France, Founders, and Femmes (women).
A rising number of success stories from female-led startups are further fueling the buzz. There is Oh My Cream, a beauty discovery e-platform and retail store that offers customized advice, and My Little Paris, a newsletter and cosmetics subscription service that has disrupted France’s email advertising industry.
In Paris, 21% of women identify as entrepreneurs but only 8% of women do so nationally, according to StartHer data.

Led by Stellar cofounder Joyce Kim, SparkChain Capital is a new $100M fund for blockchain and cryptocurrency startups

SparkChain Capital, a new $100 million early-stage fund launched by SparkLabs Group, wants to contribute by backing blockchain and cryptocurrency-related companies that are solving real-world issues.
A non-profit organization, Stellar was created to make money transfers more accessible for people in underserved communities by connecting financial systems around the world and recently partnered with IBM on a cross-border payment system for banks. After cofounding Stellar, Kim served as an investor at Freestyle Capital before switching to her current role as an advisor there.
Kim will look for entrepreneurs around the world, but notes that SparkLabs’ network overlaps with the most active blockchain and cryptocurrency markets outside of the U.S.: China, Japan and South Korea. SparkLabs Group has already taken advantage of this with several investments: enterprise blockchain startup Blocko and bitcoin remittance company Sentbe in South Korea through its accelerator program and Stockholm-based blockchain-compatible financial exchange Cryex through its global seed fund.
She describes Blocko as “one of the shining stars of the Korean startup scene.
“You’ll see more products were blockchain tech is used to expand the reach of the existing financial infrastructure to where it can’t go because the tech is too old or it wasn’t designed to do that, because blockchain is more flexible and adaptable to the needs of discrete problem sets,” she says.
While remittance is one obvious example, blockchain technology can also make it easier to handle business contracts and transactions or for data storage and security, to name a few potential applications.
“I try not to identify problems, then find an entrepreneur.

MongoDB prices its IPO at $24 per share

MongoDB has finished up what is essentially the final step in going public, pricing its IPO at $24 and raising $192 million in the process.
The company will debut on the public markets tomorrow and will once again test the waters for companies that are looking to build full-fledged businesses on the back of open-sourced software. MongoDB provides open-sourced database software that can be pretty attractive to early-stage startups as they look to get off the ground, and then look to convert those companies (and larger ones) to paying customers by offering sophisticated tools. It’s a situation not unlike Cloudera, which went public earlier this year.
The company is selling 8 million shares, with an option for underwriters to purchase an additional 1.2 million shares. At $24 per share, the company would be valued at around $1.2 billion.
While the company appears to be growing, its losses have also been quite steady — and it is, to be sure, burning a lot of cash. That’s likely why it picked up a valuation of around $1.2 billion.
The IPO could be a big win for Sequoia Capital, and also Flybridge Capital — and, of course, New York’s Kevin Ryan.
It’s as much a perception thing as it is setting up a liquidation event for investors (and eventually employees) to show that it’s going to be a strong public company.

Energy Producer Founded by Aubrey McClendon Aims for IPO

Ascent Resources LLC, the Appalachian oil-and-gas explorer founded by late oilman Aubrey McClendon and two big energy-investment firms, is preparing for an initial public offering or a sale, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Oklahoma City company is interviewing bankers to shepherd an offering and aiming for a stock-market valuation of more than $3.5 billion, some of the people said. If it happens, an offering likely wouldn’t take place until next year, and there is no guarantee the company will go forward with the plans, they said.
Following Mr. McClendon’s death in March, however, private-equity firms Energy & Minerals Group and First Reserve Corp. doubled down on their investments in the company, infusing it with roughly $1.5 billion of new cash that was used to pay down its debt.
During the first half of this year, for instance, Ascent drilled 20 of the top 25 producing oil wells in Ohio in addition to several of the largest gas wells, according to state data.
Ascent was one of several energy companies Mr. McClendon launched with Houston’s Energy & Minerals Group, or EMG, after he was ousted over corporate governance issues from Chesapeake Energy Corp. , the oil-and-gas giant he founded and turned into one of the country’s largest shale drillers. Under his direction, Chesapeake spent more than $2 billion acquiring rights to drill 1.3 million acres in Ohio, or roughly 5% of the state’s land area.
Last year’s refinancing, in which EMG, First Reserve and some of their investors pumped new cash into Ascent, valued the business at about $2.5 billion, some of the people familiar with the matter said.
Meanwhile, the company’s production in the first half of this year was nearly double that of the same period in 2016.

BP launches IPO for new Houston business

British oil and gas giant BP said Monday it commenced a planned initial public offering for its new Houston-based pipeline spinoff, BP Midstream Partners.
BP said the IPO puts up for sale 42.5 million units that are priced between $19 and $21 each, meaning that BP hopes to generate more than $800 million through the launch of the new business.
The goals are to raise more money, attract new investors, and bring more value to its pipeline assets. The midstream business primarily will house BP’s Gulf Coast and Midwest assets, specifically its Gulf of Mexico pipelines, processing and storage capacity connecting its deepwater Gulf platforms to Louisiana, as well as its pipeline assets and more affiliated with its Whiting refinery in Indiana.
The new business will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the “BPMP” stock ticker symbol. BP Midstream will have a Houston headquarters with additional offices in Chicago. BP will continue to own more than 53 percent of the midstream business after the IPO is completed.
BP originally said in July it was considering turning its U.S. pipeline business into a publicly traded master-limited partnership, which is a uniquely American tax-avoiding corporate structure that requires the companies to distribute most of their income to investors in payments similar to stock dividends.
Out of the so-called “Big Oil” giants, only Royal Dutch Shell already has an MLP, having launched Shell Midstream Partners in 2014.

Hurricanes Send London’s Top 2016 IPO Plunging

Convatec Group Plc shares dropped 21 percent to 219.5 pence at 12:10 p.m. in London, heading for the first close below the medical equipment maker’s initial public offer price of 225 pence.
The Reading, England-based company’s advanced wound-care division was unable to get supplies into its production channels in the Dominican Republic, causing knock-on disruption throughout the unit, Chief Executive Officer Paul Moraviec said after a trading update.
His comments come after Convatec warned in August of delays in relocating its production from Greensboro, North Carolina. Less progress than anticipated has since been made in reducing back-orders, with a consequent loss of some sales, the company said Monday.
“Poor execution on the company’s flagship MIP potentially raises questions not just about the near-term, but also the medium-term margin trajectory for Convatec,” Dubajova, who has a buy/neutral rating on the stock, said in a note.
“We had challenges in getting the lines up and running,” he said.

Saudis Consider Delaying Foreign Part of Aramco IPO

Another plan would include listing in Riyadh next year and privately selling a stake in Aramco to one or several cornerstone investors, one of the people said.
Glencore Plc sold in 2009 a stake through a convertible bond ahead of its 2011 IPO, still the largest ever in London where the company raised nearly $10 billion.
Despite the work on alternative plans, Saudi Arabia said earlier this month that schedule for the blockbuster initial public offering wasn’t “slipping” and the country still planned a sale by the end of 2018.
If Saudi Arabia achieves its valuation, the 5 percent stake it plans to sell would raise about $100 billion.
London and New York exchanges are vying for a role in Aramco IPO, with Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Toronto also trying to attract the sale. The Financial Conduct Authority, the U.K. markets regulator, on Friday defended a proposal to change listing rules that would make it easier for Saudi Aramco to list in London.
To read a story on the FCA and Aramco, click here.
Saudi Aramco has hired JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, HSBC Bank Plc, Moelis & Co. and Evercore Inc. to advise on the IPO.

Sogou, Mobile Search Rival Of Baidu And Alibaba, Files For IPO

While Sogou’s initial filing said it aims to raise up to $600 million, management has previously talked about an IPO raising $4 billion to $5 billion.
Sohu (SOHU) is Sogou’s controlling shareholder while social media giant Tencent Holdings (TCEHY) also owns a stake. Sogou’s relationship with Tencent is key, given the popularity of its WeChat social media app, analysts say.
In its IPO filing, Sogou said it is the second largest search engine by mobile queries in China, according to iResearch.
Baidu by all accounts is the biggest mobile search engine by far while either Alibaba-backed Shenma or Sogou are No.
Sogou said had revenue of $373.2 million during the first six months of 2017, up 15% from $322.9 million a year ago.
So it pays to identify and track companies that are getting ready to go or have recently gone public. IBD also focuses on the best-performing IPOs of the past three years in its IPO Leaders column. “In October 2017, Tencent began testing the integration of Sogou search into Weixin/WeChat, whereby its users can use Sogou search as a general search function,” said Sogou in its filing.
The filing went on to say: “We intend to discuss commercial arrangements with Tencent after completion of product testing and optimization.

5 ways tech startups are avoiding IPOs

Last week’s debut of data-center company Switch Inc. SWCH, -4.41% brought in half a billion dollars for the third-largest tech IPO this year, and streaming-video device maker Roku Inc. ROKU, +3.18% saw its valuation double in its first two trading days.
Uber Technologies Inc., Airbnb Inc., Pinterest Inc., Palantir Technologies Inc. and Dropbox Inc. are just a handful of companies valued at $10 billion or more in venture capital investments that have not publicly filed for an IPO, and there are dozens more companies with valuations of more than $1 billion.
Instead, many of those so-called unicorns are looking for any other avenues to raise funds, avoiding the type of roller-coaster performance Snap has experienced, which could show that companies’ lofty private valuations could mean a harsher reception from public investors when a deal gets to market. Even with the recent rebound in its shares, Snap still is trading below its IPO price of $17.
Through three quarters, 20 tech IPOS have raised $6.7 billion, according to Renaissance Capital, compared with 16 tech IPOs that raised $2.1 billion in the same period in 2016. There have been 121 total IPOs in the U.S. so far this year, raising $31.2 billion, compared with 102 total deals in 2016, raising $21.6 billion, according to data from PwC.
In 2014, ethereum raised $18 million in bitcoin and is now trading with a market cap of about $19 billion.
WeWork Companies Inc., which rents shared office spaces, received $4.4 billion from the SoftBank Vision Fund that valued the startup at $20 billion, and its chief executive explained that valuation in a way that probably would not fly on Wall Street.

General Insurance Corporation IPO opens today: Should you invest in India’s third-biggest IPO?

In 2008, Reliance Power raised Rs 11,700 crore and two years later in 2010, Coal India raised Rs 15,200 crore through public offerings. This will also be the first time when India’s primary market will see public offering by a reinsurer player in the country.
In the state-owned GIC Re IPO , the government will sell 107.5 million shares, while the company will raise funds by selling 17.2 million new shares.
The estimated market valuation of the corporation, as per the market, will be around Rs 1,00,000 crore.
The second largest PSU bank in term of market capitalization is Bank of Baroda, which is at Rs 71,017 crore. After Coal India in 2010, GIC will be the largest PSU IPO that will be listed on the domestic bourses.
State Bank of India has the highest market capitalization of Rs 2.42 lakh crore followed by OIC, ONGC, Coal India and others.
While the issue looks good, there are also risk in the re-insurance space as the exposure of GIC is increasing big time in the agriculture sector. “It’s a high risk business,” says a market player. In fact, global players are allowed underwrite business in India without setting up a brick and mortar office.

Zhaoqing Piston Machinery Announces Its Initial Public Offering on ASX to Raise $14 Million

SYDNEY, Oct. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Chinese companies continue to show great interest in Australian Securities Exchange with Zhaoqing Piston Machinery Ltd listing on ASX in the coming weeks. Its sights are firmly set on securing its place in the manufacture of cast iron products for the automotive industry while securing its strong position in the household air-conditioner compressor component market.
With our new investment, we are confident that we can build a strong foothold in that sector.’
Piston was among the first foundries to be certified to continue manufacturing under the new national environmental and technical standards. Piston has also been accredited as a New and High Technology Enterprise by the Chinese government which enables the company to receive preferential tax rates.
The past 3 years (2014 – 2016) has seen Piston’s revenue growing at a CAGR of 5.84% reaching $53.4 million in 2016, its gross profitability staying above 20% and its EBIT at 10.3%, 12.6%, and 12.9% over the consecutive years.
The IPO price is A$0.40 per share with the number of shares on offer between 37 and 50 million.
Piston plans to enter automotive cast iron parts manufacturing to further its business growth.
Anyone considering participating in the Offer should read the Prospectus in full and will need to complete an application form which accompanies the Prospectus.

Aquantia Corp. Files Registration Statement for Proposed Initial Public Offering

SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Aquantia Corp. announced today that it has publicly filed a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission relating to a proposed initial public offering of shares of its common stock.
Needham & Company and Raymond James are acting as co-managers.
A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitations or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.
Copies of the preliminary prospectus relating to the offering may be obtained, when available, from: Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 180 Varick Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10014; from Barclays Capital Inc., c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717; and from Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Attention: Prospectus Group, 60 Wall Street, New York, NY 10005.
Aquantia’s products are designed to cost-effectively deliver leading-edge data speeds for use in the latest generation of communications infrastructure to alleviate network bandwidth bottlenecks caused by the growth of global IP traffic.

Cramer unpacks Switch’s IPO, the second-largest tech IPO of the year

CNBC’s Jim Cramer rarely fails to notice new players arriving on the data center scene, which is why Switch’s initial public offering, the second-largest tech IPO of 2017, caught his attention.
That’s a 22 percent gain right out of the gate,” the “Mad Money” host said.
Moreover, 95 percent of Switch’s revenue, which grew by 17 percent in the first half of 2017, is recurring, meaning the company offers its data centers as a service.
Cramer took some issue with Switch’s complicated ownership structure.
Roy’s ability to call all the shots at Switch worried Cramer from an investing perspective, since public shareholders who buy into the stock risk getting overlooked or under-served. “You never want any company to be that dependent on a single customer, but the data center business tends to be pretty sticky.
But the data center play’s 2018 prospects seem promising: it’s opening a new data center campus in Atlanta, and Switch’s sales routinely soar higher after it opens a new data center.
I do love the data center, and I like Switch the company even with the convoluted ownership structure,” Cramer said. That said, call me a believer in the concept.
Questions for Cramer?