Business Travel and Expense Firm Navan Confidentially Files for IPO

Business travel and expense management solution provider Navan said Friday (June 20) that it confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a proposed initial public offering (IPO).

“The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined,” the company said in a Friday press release. “The proposed initial public offering remains subject to the completion of the SEC review process as well as market and other conditions.”

Navan said in October 2022 that it had a post-money valuation of $9.2 billion in a Series G funding round in which it raised $300 million.

“The recent funding round shows not only the strength of its business model, but also the value to companies looking to increase savings and enable responsible spending,” Navan CEO and Co-founder Ariel Cohen said at the time in a press release. “Navan is proof that empowering users through relentless innovation and automation is the future of travel.”

It was reported in December 2023 that Navan filed confidentially to go public sometime that year but then shifted the target date to April 2024.

“I think eventually we will be a public company,” Cohen told TechCrunch in December 2023, adding that the company was growing fast but that the market was not right at the time.

That same report said Navan had laid off 145 people — 5% of its staff — as part of a restructuring. The report noted that companies sometimes make cost reductions like that when they plan to go public because those cuts are viewed favorably by public markets.

Navan has announced partnerships over the last year or so. Among them are a new joint offering with Brex that streamlines travel payments into one workflow when using the Navan travel management system, a collaboration with Rhode Island-based regional bank Citizens to offer a travel management platform to Citizens’ clients, and the creation of a unified finance suite with Rho that customers can use to manage corporate travel and expenses, enforce expense policy compliance, send payments and close the books.

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