Prepping For An IPO, Postmates Raises Another $225 Million – Forbes

Postmates is receiving another cash injection as the San Francisco-based delivery service prepares to go public, raising an additional $225 million from private equity firm GPI Capital that boosts Postmates valuation to $2.4 billion, up from $1.85 billion in January.

The funding round comes at the eleventh hour of a possible IPO for Postmates, a rare move and one that hasn’t been foreshadowed by the major tech IPOs that hit the markets this year. The No. 4 delivery service had been expected to publish its prospectus this month after confidentially filing for the offering in February and after reports it might be in talks with an acquirer, which the company has shrugged off.

Pre-IPO funding rounds sometimes act as bridge financing, signaling the company could be running out of cash. Or it could reflect’s a company’s desire to raise its valuation to benchmark it higher ahead of the IPO, University of Florida professor Jay Ritter says. Postmates declined to comment on its IPO plans or timing. The company had reportedly booked $400 million in revenue in 2018 and is not profitable.

“We are excited to have GPI as a partner and the lead of this round during such a pivotal year for Postmates,” said Postmates CEO Bastian Lehmann in a statement.

New York-based private equity firm GPI Capital says it often invests in late-stage, private companies, taking stakes up to 20%. (Its stake in Postmates couldn’t be learned.) GPI Capital partner Khai Ha, who joined from Brazilian investment bank BTG Pactual, will join the Postmates board, which includes representatives from investors from Founders Fund, Tiger Global and Spark Capital.

Postmates road to the IPO has taken longer than some tech companies this year. The company confidentially filed to go public in February. Since then, consumer tech IPOs from Uber, Lyft and Pinterest debuted, and Peloton (which announced its confidential filing in June) is already doing its roadshow. Recode previously reported that Postmates held sales talks with other companies in the intervening six months, but Lehmann recently dismissed the acquisition talks in a statement to Forbes. “People talk so much shit about us at the barber shop, they forget to get a haircut,” he says.

Founded by Lehmann as a way to deliver any product from a local store, the company has capitalized on its early following from actors and musicians, who would share outrageous or silly takeout orders on social media, to build a 11.5% of the U.S. market in July, according to Second Measure. However, it continues to trail rivals like DoorDash ($12.6 billion valuation) and publicly traded rivals Grubhub and Uber Eats. Like its rivals, Postmates continues to spend heavily on marketing ahead of its IPO to continue to gain both local marketshare in key footholds like Los Angeles and broader national market share.