(News Bulletin 247) – The group’s shares, which began trading on Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange, ended up 12%, valuing the company at more than $9 billion.

The American grocery delivery platform Instacart finished sharply higher on Tuesday on Wall Street, a new indicator of investor appetite for the return of IPOs.

At the close of the market, the stock listed under the symbol CART gained 12.33% to $33.70, after having even recorded a gain of up to 43%, which values ​​the San Francisco group around 9.3 billion of dollars.

This is much less than the 39 billion valuation of the company during the last pre-listing capital raising, in 2021, just before the shutdown experienced by the private equity sector, mainly linked to the sudden rise in interest rates. “The market has adjusted a lot since then,” Fidji Simo, the French general manager of Instacart, commented on Tuesday during an interview with CNBC.

Another upcoming IPO

This entry on the Nasdaq Electronic Stock Exchange will allow existing shareholders to raise $660 million. Maplebear, parent company of Instacart, has chosen not to issue new shares, which means that the company will not benefit financially from the operation, even if it gives it more visibility with consumers and investors.

“For us, it wasn’t about raising money,” explained Fidji Simo. “We wanted to ensure that our employees had liquidity in the shares they worked so hard to achieve,” that is, offer them the opportunity to sell their securities on the market.

After the introduction of microprocessor architecture specialist Arm on Thursday, the listing of Instacart is an important new test for the IPO market, which is emerging from almost two years of hibernation.

Another big fish is already presenting itself, as online marketer Klaviyo is set to debut as early as Wednesday, with a valuation similar to that of Instacart.

Created in 2012, Instacart has more than 1,400 partners in North America – representing 85% of the American grocery market (excluding alcohol) -, from local stores to large national distributors.

Instacart’s attractiveness is due, in part, to these partnerships, but also to the fact that the group has five consecutive quarters of profits, a remarkable fact in a market with very tight margins, in which many are losing money.

Instacart owes, in part, this financial trajectory to its decision to develop in the advertising segment (particularly for the distributors who use its service), which allowed it to diversify its revenues and position itself in a field where margins are more comfortable. The major challenge for the company is now that of growth, which stalled in the first half.

(With AFP)