Jack Dorsey, retail investors win, while underwriters lose in Square IPO

This year's much-awaited initial public offer (IPO) from the mobile payments technology startup, Square received an encouraging response in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange.

The list of winners includes Jack Dorsey, Square merchants, retail investors and Goldman Sachs. The unfortunate losers, on the other hand, were the underwriters, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Square employees, and two unnamed investors.

Forbes made an assessment on who're winners and losers from the Square IPO.

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square and founder of Amazon.com has made it big as he established himself by proving his mettle through the success of Amazon and Square.  

Retail investors benefited in the trading of shares as over 47 million shares changed hands in the first session. 

According to FactSet data, investors who bought in early trading were the bigger winners.

According to the analysis report by Forbes, the San Francisco-based Square's stock rose over 45 percent from the issue price of $9 per share.  Square merchants, who bought at IPO price benefited greatly. Some merchants, who use Square products, have purchased 1.35 million shares that were donated by Dorsey. He's still under 40 as he turned 39 on 19 November 2015. 

Retail investors were benefited in the trading of shares as over 47 million shares changed hands in the first session. According to FactSet data, investors who bought in early trading benefited greatly. 

Goldman Sachs is investor in Series E round. Goldman Sachs and other investors in this round are protected by a provision called 'ratchet.' These investors bought shares at $15.46 with guarantee of 20 percent return from Square management. Their purchasing was worth $93 million at IPO price and now valued at $135 million at the closing price on Thursday.

Goldman Sachs is a winner as an investor and a loser as an underwriter. Underwriters including Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan handled the IPO process and left more money for its client. If underwriters priced Square's stock at $12, the company could have benefited with additional $77 million in cash. 

Square's employees are also not benefited much as the company was committed to issue more stock to Series E investors. This diluted the entire share pool. This is contrary to the practice in the Silicon Valley as techies get more equity packages. Moreover, two unnamed investors, who bought $30 million worth of series E shares in October, are believed to be not benefited much from the IPO.

The IPO price at $9 a share valued the company at $2.66 billion. The stock opened at $11.20 in debut trading registering a 25 percent gain. Earlier, Square thought of keeping IPO price in the range of $11 and $13 per share giving total valuation at $4 billion. Square and existing shareholders raised $243 million by offloading 27 million shares in the first session.

Initially, investors were chary of Square's valuation and they wanted to wait until the listing. Some market analysts said that IPO buyers are healthy skeptic on Unicorn valuations. 

The IPO price is considered to be heavily discounted as it was 60 percent less than the last private valuation. It raised many doubts as number of technology IPOs are underperforming during the past one year. Mutual funds and investors are marking down the value of private tech holdings. At this juncture, beating all such negative factors, square made a record performance on the Wall Street. Square share rose 64 percent to $14.78 in early trading and closed at $13.07 registering a net gain of 45 percent. 

Square mobilized $243 million from the IPO and will use these funds to recoup the losses. Square suffered a loss of $131.5 million during the first nine months of 2015. It also posted loss of $117 million in the previous corresponding period. However, the revenues were up 49 percent to $892.8 million. Square made it a success in the wake of global economic slowdown, uncertainty about US interest rate hike kept investors on edge.