Mortgage Lender LoanDepot Seeking Over $300 Million In IPO

LoanDepot will be seeking as much as $315 million in its initial public offering (IPO), according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.

The company is offering 9.41 million shares of its common stock, and private equity backer Parthenon Capital Partners is selling 5.59 million of its shares, for a combined 15 million shares. The IPO price per share is expected to be between $19 and $21, according to the filing.

Founder and CEO Anthony Hsieh said in a letter with the filing that the company, founded 11 years ago, has been “committed to providing honest products with great value, and committed to delivering them in an innovative, delightful way.”

“To do what we did back then took more than wisdom and tenacity, it took courage,” he wrote. “We chose to enter the market at a time when few were willing to take the chance, and even fewer were succeeding. Despite the headwinds originally against us, we had a vision, and we never lost our focus. We knew that online demand for mortgage products and services was going to grow and we believed the market would gravitate to originators with a recognizable brand that could deliver seamless experiences on par with emerging and best-in-class digital technologies.”

He wrote that building and using technology to garner customer satisfaction and loyalty are what sets his company apart. The company’s work has allowed it to help match customers with the right types of loans for their needs. LoanDepot’s services provide mortgages and other direct-to-consumer (D2C) loans.

LoanDepot’s IPO was announced in September, with PYMNTS reporting the company worth as much as $15 billion.

But the company’s plans to go public aren’t new; they stretch back to a 2015 blog post in which the company announced its intent to go public, filed a Form S-1, but then withdrew it, saying that action was consistent with the public interest and what investors wanted.

Hsieh wrote at that time that the volatility in the stock market had shares trading down with rival companies, so he thought it best not to go forward.