SelectQuote Surges After Raising $570 Million in Expanded IPO
SelectQuote Surges After Raising $570 Million in Expanded IPO
(Bloomberg) -- SelectQuote Inc., a platform that allows consumers to compare insurance policies, jumped as much as 41% after the company and its existing shareholders raise $570 million in its upsized U.S. initial public offering
Shares of the Overland Park, Kansas-based company opened at $26.20 on Thursday. A total of 28.5 million shares, including both primary and secondary, were sold for $20 each Wednesday after the offering earlier targeted a sale of 25 million shares at $17 to $19 apiece.
The shares were up 39% to $27.74 at 1:15 p.m., giving the company a market value of $4.53 billion. SelectQuote sold 18 million shares in the offering and existing investors sold 10.5 million.
The U.S. IPO market is seeing a gradual recovery after several muted weeks since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. The biggest offering since then, excluding special purpose acquisition companies, has been Kingsoft Cloud Holdings Ltd., a Chinese cloud service provider that raised $510 million on May 8.
“We operated through multiple economic cycles,” SelectQuote Chief Financial Officer Raffaele Sadun said in an interview. “We haven’t really changed anything in our overall outlook.”
Ringing the Bell
No one from the company, founded in 1985, was able to physically ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange because of the pandemic. Instead, Sadun rang a bell at home next to a TV screen that streams the bourse.
SelectQuote distributes life insurance policies, senior health and auto and home insurance products via its platform. For the nine months ended March 31, it had net income of $61 million on revenue of $390 million, according to its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That was up from $60 million on revenue of $263 million for the same period a year ago.
The company counts private equity firm Brookside Equity Partners among its backers. Its partners include American International Group Inc. and Prudential Financial Inc., according to its website.
The offering was led by Credit Suisse Group AG and Morgan Stanley. The shares are trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SLQT.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.