The just completed IPO of Snap Inc. has received enormous buzz and plenty of press coverage, mostly about its eye-popping valuation and offering proceeds, the big winners among the founders and early investors and the millennials who bought shares. But not nearly as much attention has been given to Snap’s tri-class capital structure
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Power Lyfting: Lyft IPO is Latest in Trend Giving Founders Disproportionate Voting Power
By Alon Y. Kapen on
Posted in class structure, control, decimalization, dual-class, founders, Lyft, multi-class, Snap, voting
Lyft, Inc. last week completed its highly anticipated initial public offering, raising over $2.3 billion at a valuation of approximately $25 billion, and turning its co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer into near billionaires on paper. But that’s not the only reason they’re smiling. Despite owning only 7% of the outstanding pre-IPO shares, Green and…
Dropbox IPO Multi-Class Structure: Bad Corporate Governance or Good Long Term Focus?
By Alon Y. Kapen on
Posted in class structure, control, Delaware, founders, IPOs, multi-class, non-voting, Snap, Uncategorized, voting
Dual or multi-class capitalization structures generally allow companies to sell large amounts of shares to the public while maintaining control in the hands of the founders and early investors. Popularized by the Google IPO in 2004, weighted voting rights have since been featured in the high profile IPOs of LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga, Facebook, Fitbit and…
Valuation Disconnect Leads to 2016 IPO Drought
By Alon Y. Kapen on
2016 turned out to be a terrible year for IPOs, both in terms of number of deals and aggregate proceeds.
According to Renaissance Capital’s U.S. IPO Market 2016 Annual Review, only 105 companies went public on U.S. exchanges in 2016, raising only $19 billion in aggregate proceeds. The deal count of 105 IPOs was…