The mortgage fintech that likened the future of digital lending to Burger King is now having it their way.
After filing a confidential statement in April and officially registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June, Blend Labs launched its initial public offering today. Company CEO and Founder Nima Ghamsari, who will maintain ownership of the company by holding on to 100% of its Class B shares, rang the New York Stock Exchange’s opening bell.
The nine-year-old San Francisco-based company spent the leadup to the IPO building its cache of offerings and accumulating value. Already in 2021, Blend bought Title365 from Mr. Cooper and doubled its valuation to $3.3 billion in the course of five months after securing $300 million in a Series G fundraising round. The capital from the IPO will go towards investing in its technology, employees and eliminating the paper-based, analog aspects of lending, according to Blend President Tim Mayopoulos.
“Consumers demand that their experiences in financial services, whether it's mortgage or otherwise, be as easy and efficient as ordering from Amazon.com in a couple of clicks or going to Netflix and picking a movie that's been curated for them,” Mayopoulos said in an interview. “There's no reason why financial service providers can't do the same thing.”
The company, which provides digital lending platforms for mortgages, credit cards and auto loans, originally projected a starting stock price in the $16 to $18 per-share range with an estimated ceiling of $414 million in gross proceeds.
Unlike some mortgage companies that recently went public, Blend didn’t downsize its pricing. It offered 20 million shares of its Class A common stock set at $18 per share, with an underwriters' 30-day option to purchase an additional 3 million shares. Blend executives will be subject to a six-month lockup and won’t be able to sell any shares, but the company’s leaders will be long-term holders and not sellers, Mayopoulos added. It also has no plans to change its role as a tech vendor.
“We made a decision a long time ago not to compete with our customers, we want to be the technology platform that empowers them,” Mayopoulos said. “There's always going to be innovation that's possible, but I do not see us becoming a lender.”
