Showing profits, Instacart files for IPO

Instacart plans to go public and revealed it has been doing quite well as a private firm.

The San Francisco-based grocery technology company has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission related to a proposed initial public offering of its common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. Instacart intends to list its common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol "CART."

Maplebear Inc., which does business as Instacart, disclosed a number of favorable financial trends in its registration statement:

• Net income improved from a loss of $73 million in 2021 to earnings of $428 million in 2022. Instacart said it has a history of losses and have only recently began generating profit, and as of June 30, 2023, had an accumulated deficit of $735 million.
• Total revenue grew from $1.83 billion in 2021 to $2.55 billion in 2022, an increase of 39%, and from $1.13 billion for the six months ended June 30, 2022 to $1.47 billion for the six months ended June 30, 2023, an increase of 31%.
• Orders grew from 223.4 million in 2021 to 262.6 million in 2022, an increase of 18%, and remained consistent from 132.3 million for the six months ended June 30, 2022 to 132.9 million for the six months ended June 30, 2023.
• Gross transaction value (GTV) grew from $24.9 billion in 2021 to $28.8 billion in 2022, an increase of 16%, and from $14.3 billion for the six months ended June 30, 2022 to $14.9 billion for the six months ended June 30, 2023, an increase of 4%.
• Transaction revenue grew from $1.26 billion (or 69% of total revenue) in 2021 to $1.81 billion in 2022, an increase of 44%, and from $799 million (or 71% of total revenue) for the six months ended June 30, 2022 to $1.07 billion (or 72% of total revenue) for the six months ended June 30, 2023, an increase of 34%.
• Gross profit grew from $1.22 billion in 2021 to $1.83 billion  in 2022, an increase of 49%, and from $769 million for the six months ended June 30, 2022 to $1.1 billion for the six months ended June 30, 2023, an increase of 44%.

Instacart currently has backing of over $2 billion in venture funds and says it has has 7.7 million active customers who spend about $317 per month.

In addition to providing hosted delivery services, the prospectus focused on Instacart’s increasing role as a provider of grocery technology.

“For more than a decade, we have invested in technology that is custom-built for online grocery,” Instacart said in the filing. “We believe our scaled marketplace provides us with unique insights into the needs of the online grocery consumer. Our strategy is to put our technology capabilities and consumer insights into the hands of our retail partners. We are investing more in technology custom-built for online grocery than any single grocer could on their own, allowing grocers to leverage our scale and investments to grow their businesses.

Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and J.P. Morgan will act as lead book-running managers for the proposed offering. BofA Securities, Barclays, and Citigroup will act as additional book-running managers, Baird, JMP Securities, A Citizens Company, LionTree, Oppenheimer & Co., Piper Sandler, SoFi, Stifel, Blaylock Van, LLC, Drexel Hamilton, Loop Capital Markets, R. Seelaus & Co., LLC, Ramirez & Co., Inc., Stern, and Tigress Financial Partners will act as co-managers for the proposed offering.