The company had been one of the few tech companies seeking to go public this year, as investors all but shut their doors to putting their cash in initial public offerings of unprofitable entities. Wall Street, spooked by rising inflation, the war in Ukraine and fears of a recession, has preferred putting its cash in safer bets.
Instacart filed papers this year for a so-called confidential filing, which meant it did not yet have to disclose certain data about its business. The filing did not require Instacart to follow through with a public offering, but it was considered a big step toward one.
But the window for going public this year is quickly shutting. Bankers prefer not to take companies public over the holidays, and the company was running out of time.
The three people who spoke of Instacart’s pause on a public offering declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Instacart, founded in 2012, pairs people at home ordering groceries on its app with shoppers who work as independent contractors for the company. The contractors pick someone’s groceries and then deliver them.
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Instacart’s revenue surged as COVID-19 cases climbed at the beginning of the pandemic and people preferred to not go to stores for safety reasons. But that acceleration dropped off in the second quarter of 2021 as more people were vaccinated and returned to their regular shopping habits.
In March, the company slashed its internal valuation to $24 billion from $40 billion. “We are confident in the strength of our business, but we are not immune to the market turbulence that has impacted leading technology companies both public and private,” Instacart said at the time.
The year for public offerings got off to a paltry start. The pace of IPOs in the first half of this year was the slowest since 2009, according to data from Dealogic. The dearth in such offerings has also cut into the revenue of some of Wall Street’s biggest banks.
