TripActions’ Upcoming IPO Generates Hype Among Investors

January 23, 2025February 6, 2025 moneymetrics.org_admin Fund

Table of Contents

A Welcome Return of S-1 Filings

After a dry spell, the IPO market is finally showing signs of life. According to News from Insider, TripActions, a unicorn in the corporate travel and expense category, has filed confidential paperwork to go public with an expected Q2 2023 debut at around a $12 billion price tag. This news comes as a relief for those who have missed the excitement of S-1 filings, a staple of startup news during the 2021 boom.

Instacart Clears Path to IPO

Mix in the fact that we are still expecting a late-2022 Instacart S-1 filing and perhaps even debut, and now we have not merely two IPOs on our dockets but two potential decacorn public offerings. These will be big, noisy, large-dollar transactions that will provide valuable data concerning market appetite for tech shares generally and shed light on two important startup sectors’ respective worth.

Excitement Builds: What We Hope to Learn from Each IPO Filing

Today, we’re going to discuss what we hope to learn from each IPO filing and which startups will be impacted by those particular data points. The Exchange explores startups, markets, and money, so join us every morning on TechCrunch+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Instacart’s S-1: What We Want to Understand

Starting with Instacart because it’s ground that we’ve trod before, we know that the company’s revenue is accelerating and has reached a massive scale. However, there are still many questions surrounding its business model:

How lucrative is servicing the corporate travel market? We presume that the customer is companies instead of individuals, so there’s good money to be made here. But we don’t know for sure.
What impact has TripAction’s expansion into the corporate spend market had on its overall business results? Corporate spend — where Brex and Ramp and others compete — is a big space and supposedly rather profitable. Is that bearing out for relative latecomer TripActions?
How competitive is TripActions’ core market, and how much recovery juice is left there?

TripActions: What We Want to Understand

Turning to TripActions, we have a very different list:

How lucrative is servicing the corporate travel market? We presume that the customer is companies instead of individuals, so there’s good money to be made here. But we don’t know for sure.
What impact has TripAction’s expansion into the corporate spend market had on its overall business results? Corporate spend — where Brex and Ramp and others compete — is a big space and supposedly rather profitable. Is that bearing out for relative latecomer TripActions?
How competitive is TripActions’ core market, and how much recovery juice is left there?