Dive Brief:
- Instacart filed plans to go public with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.
- The grocery technology company, which intends to list its shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “CART,” said it has not yet determined the number of shares it will offer nor the proposed offering’s price range.
- Instacart generated revenue of about $1.5 billion during the first six months of 2023, up 31% year over year, according to the SEC filing.
Dive Insight
By taking the next step toward its long-awaited IPO, Instacart’s SEC filing Friday provided a first glimpse into the company’s financial standing.
Instacart saw its total revenue grow 39% between 2021 and 2022, from $1.8 billion to $2.5 billion. “Advertising and other revenue” is a large chunk of the company’s sales, making up 28% of the company’s total revenue for the first half of this year. That category of revenue is growing, with the company noting that it rose 24% year over year during the first six months of 2023, to $406 million.
The company recorded net income of $242 million during the first half of 2023, compared with a loss of $74 million during the same period in 2022.
In the prospectus, CEO Fidji Simo positioned Instacart as a grocery technology company that provides retailer partners access to not only grocery e-commerce capabilities, but also in-store technologies, fulfillment options, advertising solutions and data, insights and analytical tools.
“We believe the future of grocery won’t be about choosing between shopping online and in-store. Most of us are going to do both. So we want to create a truly omni-channel experience that brings the best of the online shopping experience to physical stores, and vice versa,” Simo wrote.
Companies that have expressed interest in investing in Instacart through the IPO process include Sequoia Capital and D1 Capital Partners, both of which have previously injected funds into the company. In the Friday SEC filing, Instacart said that it has struck an agreement with PepsiCo for the CPG giant to purchase $175 million of preferred stock in a private placement.
This is not the first time Instacart has taken steps to go public. Instacart filed a confidential draft registration statement with the SEC for a potential initial public offering in May 2022. A few months later, the company halted its plans to go public, with Simo reportedly telling employees in an internal memo obtained by The Wall Street Journal that the company was ready for the public markets but awaiting “an open market window.”
In the time between the pause on the IPO plans and now, Instacart has continued to roll out new e-commerce, in-store and fulfillment services to retailers, including launching a B2B service and debuting its Scan & Pay solution at the start of this year.
