GreenSky, Inc., a digital platform for loan lending and one of Atlanta's fastest-growing fintech firms, announced Thursday the pricing of its initial public offering at the higher end of its original range and raised $874 million as it began trading on the Nasdaq. The raise is one of the highest fintech IPOs to date.
GreenSky will sell 38 million shares of Class A common stock at $23 per share under the symbol "GSKY" and has granted underwriters in the deal a 30-day option to purchase up to 5.7 million additional shares with underwriting discounts.
Last week, the company announced that it had made a major increase from its original placeholder goal, from $100 million to $748.1 million. If underwriters of the deal buy the additional shares at the maximum share price, GreenSky could raise up to $901.7 million.
Chairman of GreenSky's board of directors Gerry Benjamin said the company would continue to penetrate both the home improvement and medical industries the firm currently competes in, enter into new vertical groups and leverage its data to continue offering new products and services to more than 12,000 merchants. Since the inception of its lending platform, GreenSky has allowed 1.7 million consumers to finance over $12 billion of transactions with its bank partners.
"We think the company is incredibly well positioned to capitalize on its strategic plan," he said.
GreenSky offers a point-of-sale technology platform with paperless solutions and financial services for retailers and home-improvement contractors to give clients financing and credit offers almost instantly. With 1,100 associates in four main locations in metro-Atlanta, Benjamin said the company would continue to grow.
"I think this makes GreenSky the most valuable fintech company in the world and we’re excited about what the future has to offer," he said.
Benjamin said he wasn't surprised by the IPO's success.
"I think GreenSky is an unusual company that shows growth and profitability that a lot of experts are looking for and the market responded with a lot of enthusiasm," he said.
GreenSky is backed by the Pacific Investment Management Company and TPG, with Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley underwriting the deal.
The fintech firm continues a trend of Atlanta fintech IPOs this year. Cardlytics, a provider of marketing intelligence for financial institutions, going public in February and EVO Payments, a payments solutions business, filed for its IPO earlier this month. Meanwhile, Kabbage, which automates loans online to small businesses and customers, raised $250 million in funding from SoftBank last summer, triggering rumors of a potential IPO.
The company is one of only seven startups in the city to ever raise more than $100 million in its lifetime; GreenSky secured a total of $350 million in funding in just two rounds, according to Crunchbase, from backers QED Investors, TPG, Wellington Management, ICONIQ Capital, DST Global and Fifth Third Bancorp.
