US-based e-commerce technology provider BigCommerce will go public today in a $216m initial public offering that will achieve exits for corporate investors Telstra, Softbank and American Express.
The offering will consists of 6.85 million shares issued by BigCommerce and nearly 2.2 million additional shares divested by co-founders and CEOs Mitchell Harper and Wadih Machaalani. The shares will be offered on the Nasdaq Global Market and priced at $24.00 each.
The company had initially set a $17 to $20 range for its shares last week before expanding that to $20 to $23, and the final share price values it at approximately $1.47bn. Tiger Global Management has expressed interest in buying up to 20% of the shares in the IPO but has not confirmed it will do so.
Founded in Australia in 2009, BigCommerce produces software that helps retailers grow their online presence and more effectively sell goods and interact with customers. It made a $42.6m net loss in 2019 from $112m in revenue.
The company had raised $219m in funding, most recently securing $64m in April 2018 from investment bank Goldman Sachs’ Private Capital Investing subsidiary and venture capital firms General Catalyst, GGV Capital and Tenaya Capital.
Telecommunications and internet group SoftBank, fellow telecoms firm Telstra and payment services provider American Express had all contributed to BigCommerce’s previous round, a $30m series E, in 2016, through Softbank Capital, Telstra Ventures and American Express Ventures respectively.
The 2016 round was led by GGV Capital and also featured General Catalyst, Tenaya Capital, Revolution Growth, Split Rock Partners, Floodgate and Stephan Schambach.
SoftBank Capital led BigCommerce’s $50m series D round in 2014, investing with Telstra Ventures, American Express and existing backers General Catalyst and Revolution Growth.
None of its corporate backers own stakes in BigCommerce sized above 5%, though the co-founders held 11.9% stakes pre-IPO. Harper is selling $31.2m of shares and will come out with a 8.4% stake while Machaalani is divesting $20.9m and will retain a 9.1% share.
General Catalyst’s 17.4% stake is being diluted to 15.5% in the offering, while the other notable investors are Revolution Growth (10.6% post-IPO), GGV Capital and WestRiver Group (4.6% each) and Silicon Valley Bank (4.5%).
Morgan Stanley and Barclays are lead book-running managers for the IPO while Jefferies and KeyBanc Capital Markets are also book-running managers and Canaccord Genuity, Needham & Company, Raymond James and Truist Securities are co-managers.
The underwriters have the opportunity over the next 30 days to buy nearly 1.03 million additional shares issued by BigCommerce and 325,000 from its co-founders, potentially boosting the size of the offering to $249m.
