By Echo Wang
(Reuters) – Insurance startup Lemonade Inc, which is backed by SoftBank Group Corp, raised $329 million in its U.S. initial public offering, a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
Lemonade is the latest company to capitalize on the sharp recovery in U.S. investor appetite for new stocks following the coronavirus outbreak. On Tuesday, U.S. business analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet Holdings Inc raised $1.7 billion in its IPO after it sold more stock than expected and at a price above its indicated range.
Lemonade priced 11 million shares at $29 per share, the source said. The indicated price range earlier on Wednesday was raised to between $26 and $28 per share. Lemonade had previously guided for the offering to be priced between $23 and $26 per share.
The source requested not to be identified ahead of an official announcement. Lemonade did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The IPO values Lemonade at $1.6 billion. That is less than the $2.1 billion it was valued at last year, after it raised $300 million in a funding round led by Japan’s SoftBank and which included insurer Allianz SE and Alphabet Inc’s venture capital arm GV. Lemonade has pursued breakneck revenue growth at the expense of widening losses.
SoftBank owns a 27.3% stake in Lemonade.
Lemonade, started in late 2016, has said it has digitized the entire insurance process, replacing brokers and paperwork with algorithms and providing policies in as little as 90 seconds and claim payments in three minutes.
The company is expected to price its offering later in the day and list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “LMND” on Thursday.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Allen & Co and Barclays are the lead underwriters on Lemonade’s IPO.
(Reporting by Echo Wang in New York; Editing by Chris Reese and Leslie Adler)
