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Bloomberg
Nu Holdings Ltd, the Brazilian digital bank whose backers include Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc, raised $2.6 billion in a US initial public offering priced at the top of a marketed range it had earlier lowered.
The company, which does business as Nubank, sold 289 million shares for $9 each after offering them for $8 to $9, according to a statement confirming an earlier report by Bloomberg News. Nubank had lowered the proposed range last week after earlier seeking to raise as much as $3.18 billion. Berkshire bought 10% of the shares in the offering, said a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because it wasn’t public.
At the IPO price, Nubank has a market value of $41 billion based on the outstanding shares listed in its filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Accounting for employee stock options and restricted stock units, the company has a fully diluted value of $44 billion.
Nubank’s IPO makes it the most valuable financial institution in LatAm, surpassing Itau Unibanco Holding, with a $38 billion market value.
Sequoia Capital, which invested $1 million in Nubank in 2013 in a seed round, now has a stake that is worth $7.1 billion at the $9 share price, based on the company’s filings. Other top shareholders include DST Global, Tencent and Tiger Global.
Berkshire invested in Nubank in June, taking a $500 million stake valuing the company at $30 billion, a person familiar with the matter said.
Nubank follows a record wave of Brazilian listings, with almost 50 companies raising more than $12 billion this year. While messy politics and Brazil’s upcoming presidential election have already started undermining the demand for new deals, bankers expect some transactions to move forward in the next
couple of months.