Casper Sleep shares rose sharply in their first day of public trading, managing to beat significantly lowered expectations after a last-minute drop in its offering price.
The New York mattress-in-a-box company debuted at $12 a share. The company’s offering of 8.35 million shares at $12 was valued at $100 million.
At last check the shares were 23% higher at $14.73.
The stock-price gains came after a last-minute downshift in expectations by the company’s investment bankers, who slashed the estimated price range for the IPO to $12 to $13 a share from $17 to $19.
The company’s current overall valuation is well below the $1.1 billion it reached last March during its last round of private funding.
Casper’s relatively lackluster reception in the stock market is part of a larger trend of investors turning against startups with world-changing plans but weighed down by balance sheets drowning in red ink.
Recent cases include the scuttling of office-sharing giant WeWork’s planned IPO, as well as underperforming IPOs by Uber (UBER) – Get Report and Lyft (LYFT) – Get Report.
Casper, which delivers foam mattresses in boxes, brought in more than $312 million of revenue during the first nine months of 2019, a 20% increase over the year-earlier period. But it reported a loss for the latest period of $67.4 million.
The startup, which is credited with popularizing the bed-in-a-box trend, has spent heavily on digital advertising, spending nearly $423 million on marketing between 2016 and 2018.
