Discount eCommerce Platform Wish Files $1B IPO

Wish, eCommerce, IPO, public, Nasdaq

Silicon Valley global eCommerce unicorn Wish has filed for a $1 billion initial public offering (IPO) on Nasdaq, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange (SEC) filing on Friday (Nov. 20).

Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America are leading the IPO for Wish’s parent company, ContextLogic. Additional participants include Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, UBS Group, RBC Capital Markets and Credit Suisse Group.

The prospectus shows that Wish posted a net loss of $176 million on $1.7 billion in revenues from January to September. The platform has 100 monthly active users (MAU) buying more than two million products daily from over 500,000 merchants. 

Wish is the third-biggest eCommerce marketplace in the U.S. by sales and was the most downloaded shopping app worldwide in 2018. The filing indicates that over 70 percent of the sales on its platform don’t involve a search query.

The Silicon Valley company was co-founded in 2010 by former Google engineer Peter Szulczewski, who serves as chief executive officer and controls 65.5 percent of the company. Co-founder Danny Zhang, a former AT&T engineer, stepped down as chief technology officer last year. The company’s last fundraising round was a Series H last year, which raised $360 million.

ContextLogic owns other online marketplaces, including Geek, Mama, Home and Cute, according to the Wish website. Wish, which largely carries deeply discounted Chinese merchandise, counts Amazon among its biggest competitors.

In a PYMNTS collaboration with Visa, the August report “Marketplaces as Retail’s New Front Door: What Sellers Need to Thrive in This New Digital World,” showed that merchants are frustrated by slow payments. Some 83 percent indicated that they would leave their current eCommerce platform in exchange for instant payouts.

Wish is one of many tech companies that have gone public in recent months — Airbnb, DoorDash, Affirm, Snowflake, McAfee, Palantir, Asana and others.