Lending Club has a new S-1 registration out this morning as they begin their investor roadshow this week. It gives us a window into their expected valuation and the amount of money they expect to raise. From their filing:
LendingClub Corporation is offering 50,000,000 shares of its common stock and the selling stockholders are offering 7,700,000 shares of common stock. We will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares by the selling stockholders. This is our initial public offering and no public market currently exists for our shares of common stock. We anticipate that the initial public offering price will be between $10.00 and $12.00 per share.
After the IPO there will be 361,111,491 shares of common stock outstanding at Lending Club so at $12/share this will result in a $4.33 billion valuation. This is less than all the pundits originally suggested and is only a small increase over the $3.76 billion valuation Lending Club received in April. Of course, they are no doubt hoping to get a pop on day one that will value the company much higher than that.
Lending Club Directed Share Program
There is a little information in the prospectus about their Directed Share Program (the shares that will be set aside for retail investors). Here is the entire paragraph relating to that program.
At our request, the underwriters have reserved up to 10% of the shares of common stock offered by this prospectus for sale, at the initial public offering price, to our directors, officers, employees, investors that have invested through our marketplace as of September 30, 2014 and other individuals related to us. Shares purchased by our directors and officers will be subject to a 180-day lock-up restriction. The number of shares of common stock available for sale to the general public will be reduced to the extent these individuals purchase such reserved shares. Any reserved shares that are not so purchased will be offered by the underwriters to the general public on the same basis as the other shares offered by this prospectus.
So, there will be a maximum of 5 million shares available in this program and retail investors will have to share that amount with Lending Club employees, officers and directors. Given the anticipated demand for shares, particularly at this valuation, it is probably safe to say that not everyone will get the shares they would like.
I have setup my account on Fidelity and funded the account so I am ready to participate. But as of this writing there is no email from Fidelity as far as next steps go. I will update this post when I hear more. But it looks like we are on track for a December IPO for Lending Club.
You can read more about the news this morning on Bloomberg.
Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of LendIt Fintech, the world’s first and largest digital media and events company focused on fintech. Peter has been writing about fintech since 2010 and he is the author and creator of the Fintech One-on-One Podcast, the first and longest-running fintech interview series. Peter has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, CNBC, CNN, Fortune, NPR, Fox Business News, the Financial Times, and dozens of other publications.