Morning Report: Despegar.com’s IPO Shoots 15% Higher In Early Trading

Morning Report: The Despegar.com IPO is live after pricing at the top of its range. And the company is higher in early trading.

Crunchbase News previously dug into the Despegar.com IPO filing, noting an increase in profitability and recent revenue growth. But the picture wasn’t entirely upward and rightward. The firm had undergone a notable contraction in scale in 201 as it cut its marketing spend.

Investors, however, liked what they saw. Despegar.com priced at the upper-end of its range for $26 per share, raising $332 million according to Nasdaq.com. Today, it shares are doing this:

The company is up around 15 percent as of the time of writing.

Who is next on our IPO docket? That would be Roku, which is currently slated to go public on the 28th of this month. That offering will have a bit of a larger splash in American media, as Roku is based here. Despegar.com, in contrast, is based in Argentina.

And then that’s mostly it for IPOs that we know about. There is word that Stitch Fix and MongoDB are prepping offerings, but we have yet to see the paperwork. Slack is off the radar for 2018, Uber is a mess, Lyft loses too much money, and Airbnb makes too much money. Dropbox continues doing Dropbox things. So after Roku, who knows if we’ll see many more offerings—especially if the Nasdaq slips.

Note: Our stock spreadsheet has been updated to reflect the addition of Despegar.com to the 2017 US-listed tech IPO cohort.

From The Crunchbase Daily: 

Gogoro raises $300M for scooters

• Scooter startup Gogoro announced that it has raised $300 million in a Series C funding round backed by Singapore’s Temasek, Generation Investment Management, and other new and existing investors. Gogoro, which develops both electric scooters and battery swapping infrastructure, says it has sold over 34,000 of its “smartscooters” to date.

VCs sue Trump administration

• The National Venture Capital Association filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s delay of the International Entrepreneur Rule, an Obama-era policy that would have allowed foreign-born entrepreneurs to travel to or stay in the United States to grow their companies.

The Zebra closes $40M Series B

• The Zebra, a U.S. auto insurance comparison marketplace, raised $40 million in Series B funding led by Accel Partners. The financing comes amid a sharp rise in insurance-focused VC investment.

Crunchbase reports from Disrupt SF

• Crunchbase News attended Disrupt SF this week and came back with a few stories. First, we look at how socially-conscious founders are using technology to help communities tackle tough problems. We report on Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun’s vision for AI education. And we check in on the business model evolution of genetic testing provider 23andMe.