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Earlier today, South Korean e-commerce and delivery giant
Coupang
filed to go public in the United States. As a private company, Coupang has raised billions
, including capital from American venture capital firm Sequoia
and Japanese telecom giant SoftBank and its Vision Fund
.
Coupang’s offering, coming amidst the
public debut of a number of well-known technology brands
, will be a massive affair. Its first S-1 filing indicates that its IPO will raise capital in the range of $1 billion, far larger than the $100 million placeholder that is more common.
But the company’s scale makes its lofty IPO fundraising goals reasonable. Coupang is huge, with revenues north of $10 billion in 2020 and in improving financial health as it scales. And its revenue growth has accelerated .
Perhaps that explains why the company is
reportedly targeting a valuation of $50 billion
.
This afternoon, let’s dig into the company’s historical growth, its improving cash flow and its narrowing losses. Coupang’s debut will create a splash when it lands, so we owe it to ourselves to grok its numbers.
And as there are other e-commerce brands with a delivery function waiting in the wings to go public —
Instacart comes to mind
— how Coupang fares in its IPO matters for a good number of domestic startups and unicorns.
Coupang’s surging scale
The company’s growth across the last half-decade is impressive. Observe its
yearly revenue totals
from 2016 through 2020:
-
2016: $1.67 billion.
-
2017: $2.4 billion (+43.7%).
-
2018: $4.05 billion (+68.8%).
-
2019: $6.27 billion (+54.8%).
-
2020: $11.97 billion (+90.9%).
Sure, some of that 2020 growth is COVID-19 related, but even taking that into account, Coupang’s revenue growth is nothing short of fantastic. And what’s better is that the company has cut its losses in recent years: