Lending Club Hits the IPO Jackpot
Peer-to-peer lending platform Lending Club began trading on the New York Stock Exhange today at $15 per share, making it the biggest IPO for a California-based company so far this year. It's the 18th largest American IPO of 2014, a success for the first e-lending startup to go public. After raising nearly $870M, this force in the crowdfunding wave is valued at $5.4B. The company, launched in 2007, matches lenders to people looking for money. It generated $1B in loans last quarter.
Loans to American consumers total around $3T. But while Lending Club still pales in comparison to major players like Chase and Wells Fargo, the IPO should help validate its young (and, some say, risky) model.
"It's a landmark transaction for the broader marketplace lending sector," Fundrise co-founder and President Dan Miller told us. "It's the beginning of a wave as the first large-scale IPO. There are a few on deck. And it's going to bring new investment capital and different verticals. [Fundrise] is in real estate and we'll see similar valuations over the next three to five years"
