As the eagerly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) date of September 19 looms on the horizon, the financial world is abuzz with speculation and analysis regarding this tech-driven grocery delivery titan. Instacart, with its seamless platform, swiftly rose to prominence as the go-to solution for millions of households across the nation.

On September 15, Instacart raised eyebrows when it announced an adjustment to its proposed price range for the IPO $28-$30. Instacart's decision to pursue a value stock strategy highlights its commitment to prudent growth.

In reflecting upon this journey to the public stage, one cannot help but draw parallels to the resilience and adaptability of Columbus, Ohio itself. The global pandemic of 2020 accelerated the adoption of online grocery shopping. Consider the story of John and Sarah, a couple based in Columbus, Ohio, who, like many, found solace in Instacart's services during the height of the pandemic.

Instacart operates in a fiercely competitive industry. Rivals such as Amazon Fresh and Walmart Grocery are vying for a piece of the same market. While Instacart's revenue growth during the pandemic was impressive, questions remain about its path to profitability. The grocery delivery market is subject to evolving consumer preferences and market dynamics.

In a significant move that has set the financial world abuzz, chip design giant Arm is gearing up for its monumental initial public offering (IPO) on the illustrious New York Stock Exchange. This valuation, though substantial, falls slightly short of the reported internal valuation of $64 billion held by its parent company, SoftBank.

The anticipation surrounding this IPO has drawn the attention of a "who's who" of Big Tech companies. The likes of Apple, Intel, and Nvidia have all expressed their intent to invest in this British chip designer's maiden public offering. Distinguished names such as Apple, Intel, and Nvidia have all expressed their intentions to acquire shares in this historic IPO, endorsing the potential of this British chip designer. As financial analysts and enthusiasts eagerly await the results, it's evident that Arm's IPO is set to be nothing short of a financial spectacle.

Interestingly, Arm's decision to opt for the Nasdaq as its IPO venue came after unsuccessful attempts by the British government and stock market authorities to convince SoftBank, the parent company, to conduct the offering in London instead. The decision to go public on the Nasdaq instead of the London Stock Exchange, despite efforts from the British government and stock market leaders, signifies a bold choice by Arm.

ChargePoint, an electric vehicle recharging network, has announced a public listing through a reverse merger with Switchback Energy Acquisition Corp. Switchback, based in Dallas, was created in 2019 specifically for the transaction and raised $300 million in its IPO. ChargePoint, based in Campbell, California, is valued at $2.4 billion with the acquisition. The deal includes a $225 million private investment in public equity placement valued at $10 per share according to a company announcement.

Who is ChargePoint

ChargePoint is the largest electric vehicle charging provider in the world and was previously backed by BMW, Daimler and Siemens as well as Baillie Gifford, a Scottish investment trust company. The company intends to use the funds raised to expand in Europe and North America aiming to ride the increasing uptake of electric vehicles by consumers. In 2019 it lost $133 million on revenue of $147 million as a result of continuing investment, according to the company.

Demand for Electric Car Charging Stations

The potential market for electric vehicles is massive and demand for electric cars have risen across the globe even as demand for traditionally powered cars has fallen. The availability of charging stations will become crucial as uptake increases and the company was established in 2007 to take advantage of this. According to the company, they have built a robust, scalable platform to meet the coming demand for charging stations around the world. The company claims it has installed about 100,000 charging stations across Europe and the US and has captured over 70% of the US market.

ChargePoint Reverse Merger

Some have criticized the merger because of its lack of transparency and the presence of investors who are looking for a quick return and unlikely to stay the course in the long term. However the chief executive, Pasquale Romano, has stated that the company is a legitimate business pointing to the fact that they have been in existence for over a decade, have a well-defined market and potential for growth worldwide as electric vehicle uptake accelerates. He went on to say that the timing for becoming a public entity is right given the increased financing that will be required to roll out their stations and that this was the only consideration when going through with the transaction.

Corsair Gaming, a company that sells gaming peripherals and hardware, has filed papers for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) that is aiming to raise $100 million in capital.

Corsair started out in 1994 selling cache modules to original equipment manufacturers, then branched out into providing memory to the server market and ended up in the personal computer market in 2002 with memory kits designed for overclocking CPUs. Today the company sells a wide range of products in the gaming market including gaming headsets, memory, keyboards, mice, power supplies, water cooling units for CPUs, gaming chairs and fully setup gaming PCs. It also recently acquired Elgato Gaming that provides video capture cards for the video streaming market.

Corsair Growth

The company has grown dramatically since its inception and has reported sales of over $1.3 billion in 2020. The IPO filing states that it has sold over 190 million gaming and video streaming related products since 1998 - with 85 million of those sales clocked up in the last five years. The company has a presence in 75 countries both online and in physical stores (such as Best Buy). The products that it sells through its own website, however, are the smallest portion of its sales.

The Corsair IPO

The Corsair IPO filing includes some risk factors that may affect its future performance. Its reliance on Amazon being one of them (which accounted for almost 27% of its sales) as well as its reliance on its top 10 customers (that accounted for just over 50% of its total sales). Some of the more interesting risk factors mentioned were mobile gaming, cloud gaming and the potential for augmented and virtual reality games in the future. They warn that cloud computing, in particular, could seriously impact the business. The trend towards games that are provided from the cloud, where software runs on the cloud provider's servers and users access games online, means that a user's PC is effectively only a 'dumb terminal' that no longer requires high performance components. If cloud-delivered gaming has a large enough uptake, they point out, it could result in less demand for fast memory, custom gaming PCs and related custom gaming components and this could hurt the company's sales significantly.

The company is presently owned by majority shareholder EagleTree Capital (which paid $525 million for its stake in 2017) and other minority shareholders. Corsair stated in its IPO filing that it has over 18% of the gaming peripherals market and 42% of the gaming PC component market in the US but doesn't provide world-wide sales figures.

Today, Twilio announced that it would set the price of its' first offering to the public at fifteen dollars per share. This values the firm at about $1.23 billion, which is over its' prior one billion dollar valuation from the previous financing round.

The firm expects to make about 150 million dollars, with an additional 1.5 million shares available for sale. Also, this is a bigger price than the twelve to fourteen dollars per share amount that the firm targeted in the past.

The Twilio IPO is important, because tech IPOs have dried up considerably in 2016. Concern has spread among many small businesses that have run into problems, due to the dearth of tech IPOs this year (Twilio is just the third of 2016). Most startups hope that Twilio will revitalize the tech IPO industry, with a good showing once trading starts tomorrow.

Alibaba was recently featured as a hot IPO in the ecommerce area, but is now suffering with a slowdown in the always growing country of China. The site is trying to expand sales by finding new customers that want to tap into the expanding Chinese middle class. Another effort is to make the exchange more available in the countryside of China. The stock, traded on the NYSE, has fallen from its high and is now only 14% above its IPO pricing.

Twitter 6x6 (Photo credit: Steve Woolf)

Twitter IPO Vs. Facebook

Is there a race between social networks to see which company will have the bigger IPO? At first glance, it would seem Twitter had no intentions of posting such a high IPO, but their current policy of growth says otherwise.

When considering the nature of an IPO as an initial public posting, this one appears to be a shock to the market. Twitter was not expected to feature so strongly, even though they are worth a fraction of Facebook. This news is causing a buzz in financial circles.

Food, Inc. on Facebook (Photo credit: Jory™)

Facebook Inc. Pays No Taxes in 2012

In their most recent filing, Facebook Inc. reported not paying any taxes on their 2012 income of $1.1 billion. There are a number of reasons that a company would not pay taxes on such a sizable amount of income and this case it appears that loses from prior years and the granting of stock options to employees are the main reasons. The company lost money during earlier pre-IPO years when it was growing and only beginning to monetize its services. In addition the company gave stock grants to employees to a large degree which is common in the technology industry. These stock options are considered business costs and are therefore deductible.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Facebook made waves on the NYSE recently as it went public in early May. Shares of the stock were snatched up at the initial price offering because of predictions that it would be a good money maker on the heels of its popularity when it was just a private company. The change in principle ownership did have users of the website worried though. Those that owned a Facebook profile became worried that Facebook going public would bring a lot of negative changes to their Facebook experience.  The truth is whenever company decides to go public there inevitably going to some changes that come along with it. What will be the future Facebook after IPO?