Squire Patton Boggs has advised US technology-driven payments company, Sezzle Inc., on its AU$217 million IPO and ASX listing – one of the largest debuts on the ASX this year.
Sezzle provides a payments platform that facilitates fast, secure payments between shoppers and retailers, via a short-term, interest-free instalment payment plan that delivers to shoppers both a budgeting and financing value proposition. Sezzle has shown significant momentum since launching its payments platform in August 2017, and now has over 5,000 retail merchants, based primarily in the US and Canada, using the Sezzle platform.
The heavily oversubscribed IPO raised AU$43.6 million via the issue of 35.7 million CDIs at an issue price of AU$1.22 after having raised an additional US$5.6 million prior to the IPO. Funds raised will primarily be used to support Sezzle’s growth strategy, with a keen focus on identifying and capturing future growth opportunities in the buy-now pay-later sector through the expansion of Sezzle’s retail merchant base and product offering.
Squire Patton Boggs corporate partner Simon Rear led the transaction and was assisted by associate Michael Van Der Ende. Lawyers from the Squire Patton Boggs team in the US were also involved, led by partner Richard Horton and of counsel Leah Brownlee. The transaction also involved a US pre-IPO funding round and is an example of the strength of the firm in complex multijurisdictional capital markets transactions and cross-border fundraisings.
Simon Rear said: “We are delighted to have assisted Sezzle on this important milestone. It was a great pleasure to work with such a dynamic company and we congratulate Charlie Youakim and his team for completing the listing on ASX. We wish Sezzle well for its life as an ASX listed company.”
Sezzle listed on the ASX on 30 July 2019 with an indicative market capitalisation of approximately AU$217 million (based on the IPO issue price). Sezzle closed its first day of trading up 80%, with a market capitalisation of approximately AU$391.3 million.
The transaction was fully underwritten by lead manager Ord Minnett.