Postmates to drop IPO filing next month

Postmates plans to make its IPO paperwork public in September, TechCrunch has learned. Despite previous reports indicating the on-demand delivery company is seeking an M&A exit, sources close to the matter say Postmates is on track to go complete an initial public offering this year.

With the S-1 dropping in September, San Francisco-based Postmates is expected to debut on the stock exchange by the end of the third fiscal quarter of 2019. The company has tapped JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America Corp. as lead underwriters, Bloomberg previously reported, though other details of the float, including the size and price range of the proposed offering, have yet to be announced.

“We can’t comment on the IPO process and we don’t comment on rumor or speculation,” a Postmates spokesperson told TechCrunch.

In February, Postmates confidentially filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO. Shortly after, Postmates held M&A talks with DoorDash, another food delivery unicorn, according to people familiar with the matter, but failed to come to mutually favorable terms. DoorDash declined to comment for this story.

Postmates has raised $681 million to date with its latest round coming in earlier this year at a $1.85 billion valuation. DoorDash, on the other hand, reached a $12.6 billion valuation in May with a $600 million Series G.

As Postmates gears up for its IPO, the food delivery business continues to consolidate. DoorDash last week purchased another food delivery service, Caviar, from Square in a deal worth $410 million. Uber is said to have considered buying Caviar, which had been looking for a buyer at least since 2016, according to Bloomberg.

DoorDash has been under heavy scrutiny as of late for the way it pays its drivers. Back in February, we reported how DoorDash offsets the amount it pays drivers with tips from customers. It wasn’t until after much backlash that DoorDash finally said it would change its policies. DoorDash has yet to implement the new policy.

How Postmates will fare on the public markets is up for debate. The billion-dollar company will go head-to-head with other public businesses in the space, including powerhouses Uber and Grubhub.

Uber last week shared disappointing second-quarter earnings. The company’s food delivery unit, UberEats, however, continues to grow at an impressive rate. UberEats did $3.39 billion in gross bookings last quarter with monthly active platform consumers (MAPCs) growing more than 140% year-over-year. Still, the unit is years away from profitability, Uber chief Dara Khosrowshahi told CNBC on Thursday.

Postmates’ updated IPO plans follow a report from Bloomberg that WeWork expects to make its IPO prospectus available in the next week. Eyes will be on both WeWork, which hopes to raise more than $3.5 billion, and Postmates, as the companies occupy two unproven categories.

Postmates follows Uber, Lyft, Pinterest and many others to the public markets in 2019, a year when many of Silicon Valley’s most notable unicorns finally decided to make the transition from private to public.

Postmates, founded in 2011 by Bastian Lehmann, is backed by Spark Capital, Founders Fund, Uncork Capital, Slow Ventures, Tiger Global, Blackrock and others.