Shares of Ibotta, a Walmart-backed digital company that offers customers cash back rewards and discounts on food brands from Nestle to Coca-Cola, rose 17% in their debut on Wall Street.
Shares of Walmart-backed Ibotta soar in stock market debutShares of Ibotta, a Walmart-backed digital company that offers customers cash back rewards and discounts on food brands from Nestle to Coca-Cola, rose 17% in their debut on Wall Street.NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Ibotta, a Walmart-backed digital company that offers customers cash-back rewards and discounts on food brands from Nestle to Coca-Cola, rose 17% in their debut on Wall Street.The stock, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “IBTA,” opened at $117 on Thursday, well above the offering price of $88. By afternoon trading, it had lost some momentum and closed at $103.25, giving it a market value of more than $3 billion.Ibotta joins a handful of tech companies like Instacart and Reddit that had solid debuts in the public markets. Last September, shares of grocery delivery company Instacart closed up 12.3% on the Nasdaq, giving the company a market value of more than $11 billion. Reddit shares soared in their Wall Street debut in March this year as investors boosted the company's value to nearly $9 billion seconds after it began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.Denver-based Ibotta, founded in 2011 by attorney Bryan Leach, works with more than 850 different clients and represents 2,400 consumer brands, according to its prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Walmart, Family Dollar, Kroger and other major retailers use its artificial intelligence-based software that delivers promotions that match customers' purchasing behavior.Ibotta said it only gets paid if a customer sees a company's promotion and it leads to a sale. These customers receive cash back every time they purchase something from a participating brand's store or through their app by depositing the money into their bank account or crediting it to a gift card. Ibotta said in its filing that it has returned more than $1.8 billion to customers since 2012.Last year, the company reported net income of $38 million on revenue of $320 million. That compares with a net loss of $55 million on sales of $211 million in 2022, according to the prospectus.Walmart is among the company's shareholders with a stake of 5% or more.Ibotta sold 2.5 million shares. The company plans to use the net proceeds - which it valued at $198 million at an IPO price of $88 - for general corporate purposes, including working capital and capital expenditures. The selling shareholders are offering an additional 4.1 million shares, but Ibotta will receive no proceeds from these sales.The company has two classes of stock, with Leach, who is also president and CEO, receiving approximately 70% of the total voting power of its shares.
