Key Sentence:
- Sixteen months after losing half its workforce, restaurant software company Toast went into a whirlwind Wednesday.
- When it began trading $20 billion on the New York Stock Exchange.
Shares of the Boston-based company were priced at $40 and opened at $65.26, a dramatic increase from initial estimates for Toast. Which announced earlier this month that it would sell shares for between $30 and $33 each.
The pastor turned three of its founders – Steve Fredette, Aman Narang, and Jonathan Grimm – into billionaires.
ACCORDING TO THE BOSTON GLOBE, the IPO is also the largest Stock Of A Billionaire in Boston’s history and the latest success story for the city’s burgeoning tech scene. Which recently saw biotech firm Ginkgo Bioworks and bubble ratings from startups such as DataRobot and Klaviyo.
Before starting stock trading, Narang, who served as a chief operating Stock Of A Billionaire officer. Said the IPO was “just a milestone” on its long-term path. “The gastronomy is huge,” he said. “There are over 800,000 restaurants in the US alone. We are excited about this phase, but we have 48,000 restaurants on our platform and see so much growth potential. “
Toast posted sales of $823 million last year, a modest 24% increase from 2019. However, in a sign of its successful adaptation to the pandemic, it reports sales of $704 million form the first six months of 2021. The annual growth rate will exceed 70%.
On the other hand, the company has not made a profit, and its losses are increasing at a rate that reflects its revenue growth. Toast reported a net loss of $248 million in 2020 and $235 million for the first six months of the year.
Narang released Toast from his dungeon with Fredette and Grimm ten years ago.
Three MIT graduates previously worked at Oracle-acquired e-commerce software company Endeca. The Toast was launched in 2012 as a mobile payment app for restaurants. Since then, the software has expanded beyond transaction processing at the point of sale to include functions such as online ordering, delivery management, and marketing.