Palihapitiya’s Three New Blank-Check Firms Raise $2.1 Billion in IPOs
Palihapitiya’s Three New Blank-Check Firms Raise $2.1 Billion in IPOs
(Bloomberg) -- Three deals later, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya isn’t done with blank-check companies.
Days after announcing a deal to take public insurance startup Clover Health Investments Corp., Palihapitiya and his partners are back with three more special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, under the Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. franchise.
The new offerings raised $2.1 billion combined on Thursday, with two exceeding their earlier targets, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the information wasn’t public yet.The offerings had attracted $7 billion in total demand, one of the people said.
A representative for Social Capital declined to comment.
Social Capital is one of the most carefully watched SPAC franchises in the market because of the size of the deals and the previous acquisition targets.
Its first SPAC merged last year with Richard Branson’s space tourism business Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. The second announced a merger last month with Opendoor, a property technology startup real estate company valued in the deal at $4.8 billion.
The deal announced Tuesday values Clover Health at $3.7 billion and is scheduled to close in the first quarter of 2021.
Palihapitiya is among the earlier players in a wave of SPAC listings. He raised his first SPAC in 2017. Social Capital, the venture capital firm he co-founded, stopped taking outside money a year later.
This year, SPACs have grown to dominate IPOs, accounting for almost $50 billion of the $112 billion raised on U.S. exchanges.
The three IPOS pricing Thursday, along with their symbols and share-sale targets, are:
- Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp IV, IPOD/U, $400 million
- Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp V, IPOE/U US, $700 million
- Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp VI, IPOF/U US, $1 billion
All three offerings are being led by Credit Suisse Group AG. The units, consisting shares and warrants, are expected to begin trading Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.
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