Toast Leads the IPO Parade of Platforms Featuring Hefty Valuations

Last week’s listing announcements and actual public debuts of companies were more widely varied among initial public offerings (IPOs) and special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC)-related headlines than had been seen recently.

The IPO plans by segment, as tracked by PYMNTS, show that banking-focused announcements stood at 52 year to date; followed by companies that seek to transform various workplace practices.

Of this latter segment, Toast, which serves the restaurant vertical and offers technology geared toward modernizing point of sale (POS) operations, is mulling an IPO that could fetch more than $700 million.

As noted in this space, that debut would bring the valuation to more than $16.5 billion. Per the company’s filings, Toast had roughly 48,000 restaurant locations and a total of 29,000 customers and in the trailing 12 months to June, Toast processed more than $38 billion in gross payments. The platform was integral in handling an estimated 5.5 million guest orders daily.

Read here: POS ResTech Firm Toast Eyes IPO up to $717M

Elsewhere, and also in the platform space, mobile money transfer firm Remitly this week started the roadshow for its own IPO. In its SEC filing, Remitly noted that cross-border remittance and banking are “two of the largest financial markets in the world.” The x-border remittance market is worth about $1.5 trillion, the company said, with $40 billion in transaction fees in place. In 2020, Remitly said customers completed 31 million remittance transactions. Send volume was $16.1 billion for the 12 months ending in June 2021 — representing roughly 1 percent of the market.

Also read: Remittance Startup Remitly Launches IPO Roadshow for Investors

SaaS firm Freshworks, offering a platform that gives firms tools to broaden and improve their own customer support efforts, is aiming for a $9 billion valuation in its upcoming IPO.

Healthcare in the Mix, Too 

Definitive Healthcare, which as its name implies, focuses on the healthcare space, raised $420 million in its IPO this week. As detailed in its filings, the company’s SaaS platform operates in healthcare and data analytics; the total addressable market is more than $10 billion. “Commercial success within the healthcare ecosystem is difficult to achieve. The complex relationships between physicians, hospitals, providers, healthcare insurance companies, government regulators and patients make it particularly difficult to develop products for and sell products into the healthcare ecosystem,” the firm said in its S-1. Among the 2,600 customers in its roster, Definitive Healthcare said, are biotech and life sciences firms.

The company said that its healthcare intelligence platform leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and a front-end SaaS platform to give clients data that can help them strategically.  In the six months that ended in June of 2021, sales were up more than 40 percent to $76.7 million.