According to this piece published in the Financial Times this afternoon Lending Club has boosted the size of its planned IPO from $500 million to $650 million. Tracy Alloway and Arash Massoudi, the reporters who penned the story, are probably the best sourced journalists when it comes to the Lending Club IPO so we can be confident these are not just idle rumors.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
Lending Club had initially aimed to sell around $500m worth of stock in its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange but has decided to increase the size of the offering to about $650m, according to people familiar with the deal.
One person added that the company would likely set a valuation range that starts at $3.8bn – Lending Club’s value during its final private financing round earlier this year – and then adjust the pricing based on investor demand.
Analysts expect the company to achieve a valuation of between $4bn and $5bn. A spokesperson for Lending Club declined to comment.
The article also goes on to state that the investor roadshow should start next week and that Lending Club is targeting a mid-December IPO. This is also what I have been hearing.
The most interesting part of the article, in my opinion, is the news about the valuation. It was Alloway and Massoudi who first broke the story back in June about the $5 billion valuation for Lending Club. Since then I have heard rumors of $6 billion and even $10 billion but with the valuation range starting at $3.8 billion Lending Club is clearly looking to be a little more conservative. This is probably a good thing – no one wants to see the stock down 20% in their first day of trading due to an aggressive valuation.
There will likely be more news over the next two weeks and I will do my best to keep all Lend Academy readers up to date and informed.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
