Casper Lowers Price Range Ahead Of IPO, Sinking Valuation

Mattress startup Casper lowered the price range for its shares to between $12 and $13 on Wednesday, slashing the company’s valuation in half before it’s set to begin trading on the public markets Friday.

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Casper set a price range of between $17 and $19 per share last week. That range raised some eyebrows, because even if the company priced its shares at the high end, it would bring Casper’s valuation to about $786.2 million–significantly less than its last private valuation.

After Casper raised its $100 million Series D in March 2019, it was valued at about $1.1 billion. But with the updated price on Wednesday, Casper’s market capitalization would be $514.6 million if it prices at the high end of its range.

When Casper filed its S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month, it reported $67.4 million in losses on $312.3 million in revenue for the first nine months of 2019. Revenue grew 20.3 percent from the same period the year prior, and its losses were up about 5 percent during the same period as well. More on Casper’s financials here.

As we wrote earlier, venture-backed startups looking to go public are having something of a moment of reckoning regarding their valuations. After WeWork’s failed IPO and other lackluster public debuts of buzzy unicorns, there have been a lot of questions around valuations of unprofitable startups.

The company raised $339.7 million in funding while private, with backers including Institutional Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates.

Illustration Credit: Li-Anne Dias