Nextdoor’s decision to go public through a special purpose acquisition company was largely the result of favorable pricing compared with a traditional IPO, said Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark and an early investor in the neighborhood social network.
Gurley has been among the most vocal supporters of direct listings, another IPO alternative in which companies go public without selling shares at a steep discount to new investors. He said the average IPO in 2020 came with a 57% cost of capital.
“SPACs are remarkably cheap compared to mispriced IPOs,” Gurley told CNBC’s “TechCheck” on Friday.
Nextdoor announced plans earlier this week to pursue a SPAC sponsored by an affiliate of Khosla Ventures, Vinod Khosla’s investment firm. In a SPAC, a so-called blank check company raises capital through a public offering and then shops around for a potential target, which becomes the operating entity after the transaction closes.
The pace of new SPACs slowed earlier this year after smashing a record in 2020 and setting a new high in the first quarter of this year. The pullback came after the SEC issued accounting guidance that would classify SPAC warrants as liabilities instead of equity instruments.
However, activity has resumed. In addition to Nextdoor, fintech company Circle, space companies Planet Labs and Satellogic and solar power firm Heliogen all announced deals this week. Still, the proprietary CNBC SPAC Post Deal Index, which is composed of the largest SPACs that have announced a target or those that have already completed a SPAC merger within the last two years, is down 3.8% in 2021, after tumbling in February and March.
Nextdoor’s transaction will bring in $686 million and value the company at $4.3 billion. Benchmark first invested in 2011 at a post-money valuation of just over $30 million, according to PitchBook.
The company says its site is now used in more than 275,000 neighborhoods around the world and in nearly 1-in-3 U.S. households. It allows users to organize events, sell or give away items and alert neighbors to danger. Earlier this year, Nextdoor debuted an anti-racism notification after long facing criticism for racist comments on its platform.
In 2018, Nextdoor hired Sarah Friar, who was finance chief at Square, as its new CEO, replacing the company’s founder, Nirav Tolia. Before that, Friar spent over a decade at Goldman Sachs.
Gurley said Friar ran all the numbers and closely considered an IPO before making the ultimate decision.
“Sarah Friar is an extremely experienced CEO with tons of Wall Street experience, both having worked at an investment bank and as CFO of a public company,” Gurley said. “She dual-tracked it, was looking at the IPO and just said I have more control and get better economics by going the SPAC route.”
Investing to fix the labor shortage
Gurley appeared on “TechCheck” alongside Sumir Meghani, the co-founder and CEO of Instawork, an online jobs marketplace. Instawork on Thursday announced it raised $60 million in a financing round led by Craft Ventures.
The start-up connects workers in the restaurant, hospitality and retail industries with hourly jobs at companies in need of labor. The transaction comes a week after Suzanne Clark, CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told CNBC that the biggest problem facing American businesses is hiring enough qualified workers. She pointed to a lack of skilled labor, Covid-era jobless benefits, insufficient access to child care, and work visa restrictions.
“Our professionals make nearly double minimum wage,” Meghani said. “Our best professionals can make even more than that. They can get paid instantly when they clock out of a shift. We’re rewarding quality on Instawork with faster pay, higher pay but most of all flexibility.”
Gurley, who was one of the earliest backers of Uber, said Benchmark is focusing heavily on the category and has made about eight investments in “these types of marketplaces.”
Nio’s ET5 stands on display at the Central China International Auto Show on May 25, 2023, in Wuhan, China.
Getty Images | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Nio on Tuesday reported narrowing losses in the third quarter, but gave a revenue forecast below market expectations.
Here’s how Nio did in the third quarter, according to LSEG consensus estimates:
Revenue: 19.1 billion Chinese yuan ($2.7 billion) versus 19.4 billion yuan expected.
Loss per share: 2.67 yuan per share loss versus 2.91 yuan loss expected. That was smaller than the 3.7 yuan per share loss recorded in the second quarter of the year.
Revenue rose 47% year-on-year.
Nio shares were around 4% higher in pre-market trade in the U.S., reversing earlier losses that followed the results.
Investors are focusing on the Chinese electric carmaker’s ability to be more disciplined in its spending, as it charts a path to profitability.
Nio CEO William Li reiterated the company’s focus on being more efficient.
“We have identified opportunities to optimize our organization, reduce costs and enhance efficiency,” Li said Tuesday.
Some of those efforts are already bearing fruit. Nio reported a net loss of 4.6 billion yuan in the third quarter, down 24.8% from the second quarter of 2023, but still higher than the same period of 2022.
China’s electric vehicle market is incredibly competitive, with Nio facing pressure from other startups, like Xpeng and Li Auto, as well as giants such as Tesla and BYD.
The company said fourth-quarter revenue will be between 16.1 billion yuan and 16.7 billion yuan, representing a year-on-year increase of between 0.1% to 4.0%. Analysts expected a forecast of 22.4 billion yuan in the December quarter.
Nio also anticipates it will deliver between 47,000 and 49,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter — a hike of approximately 17.3% to 22.3% year-on-year.
Focus on efficiency
This year, China’s EV market has been the stage of a price war sparked by Tesla, which has forced carmakers to slash vehicle prices and put pressure on margins.
Nio’s gross margin was 8% in the third quarter, down from 13.3% in the same period last year.
As Nio is yet to turn a profit since it was founded in 2014, the company is trying to show investors that it can balance the need for investments, while also being more disciplined with costs.
Li said on Tuesday that Nio would defer or terminate any projects that won’t bring a financial contribution in the coming three years. He added that the company will make sure that it doesn’t “dilute” investments in core areas like technology and its sales and service network, as it prepares “for the more intense competition in the coming two years.”
As part of this push, Nio on Tuesday announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire certain manufacturing equipment and assets from Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Corp. (JAC) for 3.16 billion yuan. JAC currently manufactures Nio cars.
Li said that bringing manufacturing entirely in house could reduce the costs of such operations by 10%, but that the company would exclude battery manufacturing from being drafted in-house, as the measure would not improve gross margin.
Nio CFO Steven Wei Feng said that the company’s vehicle margin, which was 11% in the third quarter, can rise to 15% in the fourth quarter, helped by lower material and component costs, as well as better manufacturing capacity.
In 2024, the company is targeting a vehicle margin of between 15% and 18%, the CFO said.
Noor Siddiqui, founder and CEO of Orchid, during the web summit for careers during Day 2 of the 2014 Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland, Nov. 5, 2014.
Stephen McCarthy | Getty Images
Reproductive technology startup Orchid on Tuesday announced a comprehensive new genetic test that may help many prospective parents across the U.S. breathe a little easier.
The company is launching the first commercially available whole genome sequencing report for embryos, designed for couples undergoing in vitro fertilization, which is a type of treatment for people experiencing infertility or who are at risk of passing on genetic problems.
With IVF, after a woman has had around two weeks of daily hormone injections, her mature eggs are extracted and fertilized in a lab, and the viable embryos are later transferred into the uterus.
Orchid said its new test will help couples identify whether their embryos present genetic risks such as birth defects, neurodevelopmental disorders, chromosomal abnormalities, or pediatric and adult-onset cancers that were previously only detectable after birth.
“This is a major advance in the amount of information parents can have,” Noor Siddiqui, Orchid’s founder and CEO, told CNBC in an interview. “The way that you can use that information is really up to you, but it gives a lot more control and confidence into a process that, for all of history, has just been totally left to chance.”
Orchid’s technology sequences more than 99% of an embryo’s genome, while existing tests typically read around .25%, the company said in a release.
IVF is a taxing process that can cost an average of more than $12,000 in the U.S., according to the Institute for Reproductive Health. Success is not guaranteed, and some people go through multiple rounds of IVF before a pregnancy develops.
Orchid’s genetic test will cost couples an additional $2,500 per embryo sequenced, but it does not add any new steps or risks to the IVF process, Siddiqui said. She added that the cost of the report should come down as the company is able to scale up its operations and introduce more automation.
“We want to make this something that’s accessible to everyone,” Siddiqui said.
Beginning Tuesday, Orchid’s technology will be available at IVF clinics in major cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and Austin, and Siddiqui said Orchid can be made available at additional clinics at the request of patients.
Couples will receive their report back from Orchid after about three weeks, the company said, and a board-certified genetic counselor will help them understand the results.
Orchid’s whole genome embryo report
Courtesy: Orchid
Orchid has secured $12 million in funding from investors such as Prometheus Fund and Refactor Capital. Anne Wojcicki, the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe; Dylan Field, the co-founder and CEO of Figma; Fidji Simo, the CEO of Instacart; Brian Armstrong, the co-founder CEO of Coinbase, and others are also backers.
For many hopeful parents, the peace of mind is worth Orchid’s steep price.
Roshan George, a 35-year-old engineer in San Francisco, began the IVF process with his wife, Julie, in the fall.
George said they were feeling some anxiety about having a baby at an older age, and their nerves were amplified after their IVF clinic discovered they are both carriers for nonsyndromic hearing loss, which can result in a partial or total loss of hearing.
George had heard of Orchid through some friends, he said, and the couple decided to sequence all three of their viable embryos with the company. He said getting the embryos tested was very straightforward, and when the results came back, they discovered that two out of the three embryos were healthy.
“We were super relieved right off the bat,” George told CNBC in an interview. “That was very gratifying to hear.”
“Just having some degree of certainty — you’re going to make sure they’re not sick when they’re born and all that sort of stuff — it’s a huge amount of anxiety that’s been lifted off,” George said.
George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, is an investor and an adviser at Orchid. Church developed the first direct genome sequencing method, he said, and Orchid’s technology will give parents the ability to access a hundred times more information about their baby than they could attain previously.
Church said it is “perfectly logical” for parents to care about helping their children, whether it pertains to their genetic health, the quality of their food or whether they get enough sleep and exercise.
He added that people often think that genetic risks don’t apply to them, or that there’s nothing they can do if something is wrong. But with Orchid, Church said parents have the detailed information they need to make informed decisions.
“If you went to Las Vegas with a 97% chance of winning, you would definitely go to Las Vegas,” Church told CNBC in an interview. “But it’s different when you’re talking about quarters as opposed to children.”
Orchid’s primary focus after the launch Tuesday will be on scaling up its technology and making it more accessible, Siddiqui said.
She said Orchid has spent an “enormous amount of effort” identifying the mutations that will cause severe disease during pregnancy or early childhood or result in serious chronic conditions. She wanted to ensure the company is able to provide parents with information that is “super meaningful.”
“I think this has the potential to totally redefine reproduction,” Siddiqui said. “I just think that’s really exciting to be able to make people more confident about one of the most important decisions of their life, and to give them a little bit more control.”
Shares of video game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software fell 4% in extended trading on Monday after the company released its trailer for the next version of the Grand Theft Auto game, which will come out in 2025. The company had originally planned to put out the trailer hours later, at 6 a.m. ET. on Tuesday, Dec. 5, but a leak caused Take Two to move up its timeline.
The video was originally leaked on X, formerly known as Twitter. After that, Rockstar Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two, published the trailer on YouTube.
Grand Theft Auto VI is likely to impact Take Two shares upon its release. Grand Theft Auto V debuted in 2013, and it’s now the second best-selling video game in history, having sold more than 190 million copies. It’s only behind Microsoft-owned Minecraft, of which over 300 million copies have been sold.
Gamers have been eager for details about the new game for years. Sam Houser, Rockstar’s founder, announced in early November that the trailer would come out in December.
“As the label approaches its 25th anniversary next month, we congratulate Rockstar Games on their constant innovation in the pursuit of the highest quality interactive entertainment,” Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told analysts on a November conference call.
