After Dropbox pulled off a successful IPO, it was expected to trigger off a domino effect in other successful privately held companies. And looks like this year, is shaping to be a solid year for IPOs as another fastest growing financial technology firm, GreenSky, plans for a stock market listing.
Reports from Wall Street Journal states that GreenSky — a digital lender — has secretly filed for an initial public offering, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Through public listing, the company seeks to raise $1 billion that could value the online lender at roughly $5 billion.
Despite the astounding achievement, not much is known of the company that was established in 2006 by David Zalik, the CEO of the company. GreenSky is said to be altering the consumer credit marketplace at a faster pace. After the Irish technology company Stripe and online personal finance firm SoFi, GreenSky grabbed the third spot in the Forbes list of the biggest FinTech companies.
The customer base of this company includes home improvement retailers like Home Depot, health care providers and other merchants and contractors that offer credit to their customers.
Last year, a $200 million investment round from Pacific Investment Management valued the company at $4.5 billion, making it a huge brand name in the online lending space.
The surge in IPOs this year cannot be credited entirely to Dropbox and Spotify. The reason why more unicorns are eyeing the public markets is partly due to the recent changes in the SEC rules.
Last year, the SEC expanded its option of confidential IPO filing to all the companies that wished to become a publicly traded company. This amendment to the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (“JOBS”) Act has proven successful as more companies are opting to file IPO confidentially and the most significant example to this is Spotify that opted for a direct listing.
Other companies that opted for confidential IPO filing lately are e-signature company DocuSign and Utah based edu-tech unicorn Pluralsight.