The pandemic had many people scrambling for answers about financial health and guidance.
And like many a FinTech before it, NerdWallet, the personal finance company, has found it an opportune time to go public.
The company said in its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that its revenues have rebounded through the last several months as financial services providers have sought to reach end users with tailored recommendations and offers, and consumers have sought financial guidance about credit, mortgages and other products and services.
As reported earlier this year, the company has been seeking a valuation of as much as $5 billion.
Read More: Report: NerdWallet Looks To Go Public With Confidential Filing
Drilling down into the financials, the company said that its 2020 revenues in $245.3 million represented a mid-single digit percentage point rise over the previous year’s $228.3 million.
The pace of growth has quickened to about 32 percent, as measured through the first half of the year to $181.6 million in 2021. But operating loss in the latest six month period stood at nearly $36 million, where the operating income in the same period a year ago stood at $1.4 million.
The average of 16 million monthly unique visitors seen in 2020 has expanded to 21 million through the first six months of 2021, the company said.
“We define a Monthly Unique User (MUU) as a unique user with at least one session in a given month as determined by unique device identifiers,” said the company in the filing.
The firm said that the platform model can benefit providers by offering up consumers who are “ready to transact.”
“As more consumers use our platform and engage with our extensive financial guidance and tools, our consumer and transaction database grows and our product recommendations yield higher success rates,” said NerdWallet. “This increases user satisfaction, converting more users into Registered Users and improving repeat user rates. As we apply machine learning to match more high-quality consumers with products and services, our platform becomes increasingly valuable to financial services partners. This, in turn, attracts new partners and new financial products to the platform.”
The company noted that “our current and primary addressable market opportunity is U.S. financial services digital advertising spend, which is expected to be more than $23 billion in 2021.”
The company said that services provided by financial advisors, insurance agencies, loan brokers and others will “increasingly transition online in the coming years, which will expand our addressable market.” Part of that shift will come as providers “modernize their approach to sales commissions and related compensation,” which in turn will expand the addressable market.
Among the risk factors: The company said that “we are dependent on internet search engines, primarily Google, to direct traffic to our platform, including our website. Search engines, such as Google, may modify their search algorithms and policies or enforce those policies in ways that are detrimental to us, and without prior notice to us.”
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