Car-sharing marketplace Turo Inc. has publicly filed for its initial public offering, saying that some car owners and renters may have a chance to participate in the offering.
Turo, whose marketplace allows private car owners to rent their cars, plans to allocate 5% of the shares to sell to a few people, including hosts and guests, who meet certain conditions, known as the directed-share program.
Often referred to as a friend-and-family program, a directed-share program allows certain individuals to purchase certain shares at the IPO price before the stock begins to publicly trade. Uber Technologies Inc. offered a similar program for some of its drivers in the US.
The planned IPO will include shares sold by Turo and some of its largest shareholders, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Large investors include IAC/InterActiveCorp., led by Chairman Barry Diller, and entities affiliated with August Capital. Turo said its largest shareholders would continue to have a significant impact after the IPO.
San Francisco-based Turo disclosed in August that it filed documents for a potential IPO, without giving any details, such as who the selling shareholders would be if it eventually pursues the offering.
The latest securities filing includes a proposed offering amount of $100 million, but that figure is used to calculate filing fees and is often changed.
Compared to the same period in 2020, revenue for the first nine months of 2021 more than tripled to more than $330 million.
The company, which has yet to post an annual profit, said its accumulated losses stood at $544 million as of September 30, according to the documents.
Turo said it had more than 85,000 active hosts, more than 160,000 active vehicle listings and 1.3 million active guests in the US, Canada and the UK as of September 30.
“Our platform avoids the capital intensity and asset-based limitations of the rental car and fleet-based car-sharing industries, while allowing individual car owners to earn additional income by sharing their vehicles through our marketplace. provides cost-effective access,” Turo said, adding that hosts may offer other extras, such as unlimited benefits, camping equipment, or prepaid refueling, for example.
Like other companies in the so-called sharing economy, such as Airbnb Inc., Touro makes money by taking deductions from both the host and the guest.
The company intends to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TURO.
This story has been published without modification to the text from a wire agency feed
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