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Sustainable shoe company Allbirds made its long rumored IPO official on Tuesday.
The San Francisco-based company said it filed for an initial public offering with plans to list under the ticker symbol BIRD.
The $1.7 billion company hopes to cash in on consumers’ growing appetite for brands that claim to reduce their carbon footprint.
Its signature sneakers are made from merino wool and a new line of active wear launched this month is made from eucalyptus tree fiber and wool. The company, which calls itself environmentally friendly, avoids polyester, which it says makes up 55 percent of all clothing and contributes to many tons of carbon emissions.
Allbirds also joins a wave of IPOs this year, including eyeglass wear company, Warby Parker, Jessica Alba’s clean beauty The Honest Co., and resellers ThreadUp, Poshmark among others.
A year ago, Allbirds raised $100 million from Franklin Templeton and T. Rowe Price.
There has been huge consumer demand for activewear during the pandemic as well as pent up demand from investors for sustainable companies, which likely pushed Allbirds to go public sooner than it had anticipated.
Cofounder Tim Brown said as recently as February that the company had “no plans for an IPO,” according to a WWD report. “The possibility of being a public company is a huge challenge, and at five years old, it’s still very early in our life cycle.”
Allbirds wasn’t profitable last year or the year before: Its net loss totaled $14.5 million in 2019 and grew to $25.9 million in 2020, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
For the six-month period ended June 30, Allbirds reported a loss of $21.1 million.
Its revenue, meantime, has grown to $219.3 million in 2020 from $193.7 million in 2019. For the six-month period ended June 30, revenue was $117.5 million.
Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and BofA Securities are lead underwriters as part of 17 banks working on the deal.
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