Bending Spoons opens books for a 20 billion Nasdaq IPO
The Milan software group behind Evernote, WeTransfer and Vimeo is racing toward a late June listing, targeting a valuation of around 20 billion dollars.
- Bending Spoons is targeting a valuation of around 20 billion dollars and a raise of 1.5 billion dollars.
- The order book formally opened on June 15 for institutional demand.
- The listing will trade under ticker BSP on Nasdaq, planned for late June.
- The company owns Evernote, WeTransfer and Vimeo, and filed its F-1 on June 8.
How does one Italian software house suddenly end up worth as much as a serious American tech firm? By spending years buying apps everyone already uses, then squeezing them for profit. Bending Spoons, the group out of Milan, is now packaging all of that into a stock market debut.
A bank syndicate formally opened the order book on June 15. That is the moment when underwriters measure how badly institutional investors actually want in, before the share price gets locked. The goal is clear: a valuation of around 20 billion dollars and a raise of 1.5 billion dollars through the IPO itself.
The listing is planned for late June, under the ticker BSP on Nasdaq. The company filed its formal F-1 on June 8, which kicked off the official part of the process.
What exactly is Bending Spoons, and why might the name mean nothing to you?
You have probably never heard of the company, but you have used its apps. Bending Spoons owns Evernote, the note-taking tool that was once a byword for digital notes. It also owns WeTransfer, the service for sending big files over a link, and Vimeo, the video platform that has long held on as a quieter alternative to YouTube.
The playbook is recognizable. Instead of building an app from scratch and waiting for it to catch on, they buy already popular services with a large user base. Then they change the pricing, the subscription tiers and the way the app makes money. That drives some users up the wall, but the numbers are clearly pushing the firm toward a 20 billion valuation.
There is a practical lesson here for the rest of us. When a favorite app gets sold to a new owner, check first what is changing in the subscription plan. Our advice is to look right away for an option to export your data, because once you move to the new terms that option tends to get hidden or charged for.
How do you read a 20 billion IPO, and is that a lot?
A valuation of 20 billion dollars sounds enormous, and it is large for a European software firm. But it is not a price anyone actually pays. It is the value the market assigns to the whole company, the share price multiplied by the number of shares. The real money flowing into the firm is the 1.5 billion dollars from selling new shares.
The ticker BSP is the symbol the share will trade under on Nasdaq. Nasdaq is the American exchange known for tech companies, so choosing it over a European venue says a fair bit. Bending Spoons wants American investors and American visibility, even with its headquarters in Milan.
The order book that opened on June 15 is no small step. It is the window in which banks collect bids from large funds and gauge how many there are. If demand is strong, the share price is set at the top of the range. If it is weak, the IPO is either priced down or delayed. By late June we will see which way it went.
For the average Evernote or Vimeo user, this IPO will not change the app overnight. But going public also brings shareholder pressure to keep growing revenue, and that usually spills over into subscription prices. Would you pay more for an app you use every day, or would you go hunting for a free replacement?
