Warby Parker filed initial plans to go public and at least two high-profile Tiger-related funds are poised to be big beneficiaries.
The maker of fashionable eye-glass frames said Tuesday evening in a regulatory filing that it plans to list its shares through a direct listing instead of the conventional initial public offering.
With direct listings, companies issue their shares directly into the market, rather than using investment banks to sell the shares. The stock exchange then sets an official reference price for the IPO.
Very few companies have gone public this way compared to the traditional method.
In the first half of this year, Warby Parker — which touts that its eye-glass frames start at $95 a pair — reported $270.5 million in revenue and a $20.4 million loss, according to the regulatory filing.
In 2020 it generated $393.7 million in revenue and posted a $55.9 million loss, according to the document.
Two of the company’s disclosed 5 percent owners are Tiger Global Management, headed by Chase Coleman and Scott Shleifer, and D1 Capital Partners, headed by Dan Sundheim, although the filing does not disclose the number of shares each firm holds.
The filing does disclose that in August 2020 D1 paid more than $119 million for a little more than 4.86 million shares of Series G redeemable convertible preferred stock at a purchase price of $24.53 per share.
Both Tiger Global and D1 have participated in several rounds of financings over the years.
Most recently, in 2020 Warby Parker closed on $245 million in funding, which included a $120 million series G round led by D1, which valued the company at $3 billion, according to TechCrunch.
Tiger Global led Warby Parker’s Series A funding round in 2011 and its Series C round in 2013. It also participated in the Series B and Series D funding rounds, according to Crunchbase.
Tiger Global is best known for its hedge funds and long-only fund. But its private equity business — which is what it calls its venture capital arm — accounts for more than half of the firm’s more than $70 billion in assets.
The firm recently told clients in its hedge fund’s second-quarter letter that 25 companies in its private portfolio had already gone public this year.
At D1, meanwhile, the Class C shares of its long-short hedge fund allocate 35 percent of their capital to private investments.
