Square, the US-based payment services provider backed by coffee chain Starbucks and payment services firm Visa, raised $243m yesterday in an initial public offering priced significantly below its range.
The company will issue 27 million shares priced at $9 each, below the $11 to $13 range it set earlier this month, and around 42% lower than the $15.46 price at which investors bought shares in its last funding round, a $150m series E round in October 2014.
Square’s core product is a card reader that enables sellers to process payments on any mobile device, but it has also branched out into a range of small business services including analytics tools and its lending platform, Square Capital.
Despite revenue rising however, Square continues to make hefty losses. Its revenue for the first nine months of 2015 increased almost 50% year on year to $893m, but its net loss for the same period rose 12% to $131m.
Square had raised about $490m in equity funding prior to the offering. Neither Visa, which invested an undisclosed amount in the company in 2011, nor Starbucks, which took part in its $200m series D round in 2012, held stakes sized at over 5%.
Venture capital firm Khosla Ventures is Square’s largest shareholder, with a 16.9% stake pre-IPO that was diluted to 15.3% post-offering. Other notable shareholders include JP Morgan Chase (5.1% post-IPO), Ritzi Traverse Management (4.9%) and Sequoia Capital (4.8%).
GIC, Goldman Sachs and Rizvi Traverse, the participants in the series E round, will receive additional shares as a condition of their investment that stated they would be granted shares if Square floated at less than $18.55 per share.
The company’s other investors include Citi Ventures, financial services firm Citi’s strategic investment arm, as well as GIC, Goldman Sachs, CrunchFund, GGV Capital, First Round, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital and Sapphire Ventures, the VC firm spun out of enterprise software company SAP.
Square opened at $11.20 on its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange today, briefly rising as high as $14.78 before closing at $13.07.
– Photo courtesy of Square, Inc. Story re-edited on 20/11/15 to reflect market debut.