Companies and Brands

Live Coverage of the Wayfair IPO (Update 3)

Wayfair 1
Source: Wayfair.com
Online home furnishings seller Wayfair Inc. (NYSE: W) priced 11 million shares on Wednesday at $29, above the expected range of $25 to $28, and the shares began trading Thursday morning at $36.72, up more than 25%.

Please Note: This story has been updated to cover the price and volume changes.

Of the shares included in the initial public offering (IPO), 10.5 million were offered by the company and 500,000 were offered by selling stockholders. Underwriters have a 30-day option on an additional 1.65 million shares.

At the IPO price, Wayfair raised $319 million at a market value of about $2.32 billion. The company said it would use a portion of the proceeds to pay an accrued cash dividend its Series A preferred shareholders who convert their preferred shares to common stock. Wayfair also plans to distribute a portion of the net proceeds to satisfy minimum statutory tax withholding and remittance obligations related to the settlement of outstanding restricted stock units upon the completion of this offering, which amount was approximately $14.0 million as of June 30, 2014, and it intends to use the remaining net proceeds for working capital and other general corporate purposes. The company may also use a portion of the net proceeds from this offering for the acquisition of, or investment in, technologies, solutions or businesses that complement its current business.

Revenues in 2013 totaled $915 million, and gross profits totaled $224 million. That is the good news. The less-good news is that Wayfair competes, if not directly, at least significantly with Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN). Even though revenues and gross profits have risen in each of the past three years, Wayfair has posted a net loss in each of those years that is getting larger, and in the first six months of this year the company is showing a net loss of $63 million, a third higher than its loss in all of 2013.

Wayfair is a dual-class stock company, and its Class B shares carry 10 votes per share compared, with one vote per share for the Class A common stock sold in Thursday’s IPO. The company’s co-founders did not convert and sell any of their Class B shares in the IPO, and each owns 28.3% of the outstanding Class B shares.

Update 4:05 p.m. Eastern: Shares closed at $37.72, up 30% from the IPO price of $29.00 and posted a new high in the last half-hour of trading at $39.43 before backing up a bit. This is a strong showing from a company that faces some stiff competition. Nearly 16 million shares were traded today.

Update 3:35 p.m. Eastern: Shares have posted a new high of $38.67 late in the trading day. Nearly 14 million shares have changed hands so far today.

Update 1:20 p.m. Eastern: Wayfair’s shares were up 24% at $35.98 on 11.6 million shares — so the entire trading volume has now changed hands on the first trading day. How did Jeff Bezos let this one make it to market?

More than 5.5 million shares changed hands in the early minutes, and shares were trading at $36.57, after touching a high of $37.00.

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