The grocery delivery app is targeting a valuation of up to $ 12 billion

LONDON – UK grocery shipping company Deliveroo is targeting a valuation of up to £ 8.8 billion (US $ 12.2 billion) on its upcoming London IPO.

The Amazon-backed company has set a price range between £ 3.90 and £ 4.60 per share for its blockbuster IPO, implying an estimated market cap of between £ 7.6 billion and £ 8.8 billion.

Deliveroo’s market debut is expected to be one of the UK’s biggest offerings in years. The company announced plans for an IPO in London earlier this month, which will bring the UK capital a big profit after Brexit as it seeks to attract more high-growth tech companies.

A government-backed review called for reforms to the London listing regime, including the ability to list stocks with two classes, such as those developed by Google and Facebook. Currently, companies in the premium segment of the London stock market are unable to do so, which prevents them from being included in benchmarks like the FTSE 100.

Deliveroo has opted for a two-class share structure that gives CEO and founder Will Shu expanded voting rights. Shu receives 20 votes per share while other investors only have one vote. Deliveroo hopes to generate gross proceeds of £ 1 billion from the IPO.

“We are proud to be listed in London, the city where Deliveroo started,” Shu said in a statement on Monday.

“When we become a public company, we can continue to invest in innovation, develop new technical tools to help restaurants and grocers, make drivers more work and give consumers more choices to bring them the food they want from love more restaurants than ever before. “

Deliveroo says it will use the IPO proceeds to upgrade its platform and deepen on-demand deliveries of food that has benefited greatly from the coronavirus pandemic.

In a trade update on Monday, Deliveroo said the total value of transactions it processed more than doubled in the first two months of the year, which has been boosted by the coronavirus lockdown in the UK. In the UK and Ireland, volume grew 130% year over year, while other markets grew 112%.

Deliveroo moved from a near-missed result in 2020 as part of a competitive review of Amazon’s minority stake in the company to operating profitability towards the end of the year as demand for online take-away apps was sparked by pandemics.

“We have seen a strong start to 2021 and are just beginning an exciting journey in a large, rapidly growing online grocery delivery market with a great opportunity,” said Shu.

Deliveroo has earmarked £ 50m worth of shares to be offered to its customers. The company advertises the offer in a large advertising banner at the top of its app. This is because retailers have been piling up in stock markets over the past few months, a phenomenon that has resulted in huge volatility in the price of sharply shortened stocks like GameStop and AMC.