• This week's IPO for Volvo Cars won't be as lucrative as the company hoped. The Swedish automaker priced its listing in Stockholm at 53 kroner per share, at the bottom of its expected range, raising about $2.3 billion and resulting in a valuation of $18 billion. That latter figure would have reached $23 billion if Volvo had priced the offering at 68 kroner, the top end of its range. The company is expected to begin trading this Friday. Currently owned by China's Geely Holdings, Volvo announced plans earlier this year to phase out all gas-powered cars and go fully electric by 2030.
• Environmentally focused shoe brand Allbirds would raise $250 million in proceeds and be valued at $1.86 billion if it prices its upcoming IPO on the Nasdaq in the middle of its expected range, according to a new SEC filing. The San Francisco-based company plans to offer about 19.2 million shares for between $12 and $14 apiece. That valuation would be a slight uptick from September 2020, when venture capitalists pegged the company's worth at $1.7 billion in a $100 million round of funding. Allbirds' biggest backer is Maveron, with a 14.7% pre-IPO stake, while Tiger Global and Lerer Hippeau Ventures also own significant stakes.
• At this point, it's become clear that the next generation of buyout funds will be the industry's biggest ever, and by a wide margin. Advent International is seeking to raise $25 billion for its latest flagship effort, according to Bloomberg, which would mark a significant increase from the prior $17.5 billion flagship fund the firm closed just two years ago. Other industry heavyweights are also trying to raise their biggest funds ever: Blackstone is targeting $30 billion and The Carlyle Group wants to bring in $27 billion, per recent Bloomberg reports. Hellman & Friedman already closed a $24.4 billion fund in July. That was the third-biggest buyout fund of all time—and now, three even bigger funds could be on the way.
• Advent International needs to raise all that new capital because of deals like this one: The firm teamed up with Silver Lake to lead a $1 billion investment in Thrasio, an e-commerce company that acquires and manages other smaller consumer-goods brands that sell their wares on Amazon. Thrasio is one of the leaders in this emerging sector of e-commerce roll-ups, with nearly $2.5 billion in funding raised over the past three years, according to PitchBook. The new deal includes participation from Oaktree Capital Management, Peak6 and others, and it values Thrasio at more than $5 billion, per Bloomberg. Advent first backed the company in July 2020.
• European food delivery company Just Eat Takeaway.com has a message for one of its major shareholders: Be patient. Cat Rock Capital, which owns a 6.5% stake in the Dutch company, published an open letter calling for Just Eat Takeaway to sell the U.S. division of Grubhub, the fellow food delivery company that Just Eat Takeaway acquired for $7.3 billion a mere four months ago, suggesting companies like Amazon, Walmart and Instacart could be interested buyers. In response, Just Eat Takeaway said it "believes that, over time, [Grubhub] will be a participant in the consolidation of the wider U.S. market" for food delivery, and that Just Eat Takeaway "expects to be involved in this consolidation when it comes." We'll see what kind of support from other shareholders Cat Rock can build.
• Private equity firm Beringer Capital acquired a majority stake in Benzinga, a digital media site focused on financial news and investment analysis. The Detroit-based business has raised only a few million dollars in prior debt and equity funding, per PitchBook, with backers including LightBank and Detroit Venture Partners. Benzinga says that a broader boom of interest in areas like stock-trading and cryptocurrencies helped drive its traffic numbers to record highs last year. Beringer invests primarily in the media, marketing and tech sectors.
• The parent company of Nykaa, an online beauty retailer in India, set initial terms for its IPO in New Delhi later this week, revealing plans to raise as much as 47.2 million rupees (about $629 million) at a valuation that could reach $7.1 billion. Warburg Pincus has backed the company since 2018, while TPG acquired a stake a year later. The company plans to use part of the proceeds from the IPO to open brick-and-mortar stores, becoming the latest e-commerce startup to begin opening physical locations as its business begins to mature.
• In the past 50 years, only seven people have played a game in both the NFL and MLB. One of them, Chad Hutchinson, is the newest partner at Arctos Sports Partners—a logical hire for a private equity firm that was created to buy stakes in professional sports franchises. Hutchinson was a member of the St. Louis Cardinals organization from 1998 to 2001, pitching three games for the big-league club his final year, and he then headed to the gridiron, starting nine games for the Dallas Cowboys and five more for the Chicago Bears between 2002 and 2004. He played both sports during college at Stanford. Hutchinson was most recently a managing director at Sixth Street, and before that, he cofounded an investment fund called Wakestorm Capital.
• Norwest Equity Partners closed its acquisition of a majority stake in Coretelligent, a provider of various IT offerings including disaster recovery and cloud services. Existing investor VSS Capital Partners, which has backed the Massachusetts-based company since 2016, will retain a minority stake. Coretelligent has pursued a handful of add-ons in recent years with support from VSS, including last year's purchase of Soundshore Technology Group.
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