Tiger Global Management is poised to become a big beneficiary of the initial public offering sought by Peloton Interactive, the latest unicorn to file IPO plans.
Entities associated with Tiger Global — which has a huge private equity business as well as top-performing hedge funds and long-only funds — own 19.8 percent of Peloton's class B shares, according to a preliminary IPO prospectus filed August 27 with regulators. So far Peloton has not set the number of shares it plans to offer or the price it is seeking.
Tiger Global declined to comment.
Peloton, which offers customers monthly subscriptions to stream exercise classes on its bikes, is currently valued at $4.2 billion, according to data tracker CB Insights. In the fiscal year ended June 2019, the company lost $195.6 million on $915 million of revenues, four times larger than the previous year’s loss, the IPO filing shows.
Peloton's board seat held by president William Lynch is elected by the holders of a majority of the Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock, of which Tiger Global is the majority holder, according to the IPO prospectus. Tiger Global’s class B shares are held by Tiger Global Private Investment Partners VII, Tiger Global PIP VII Holdings, and an affiliate of Tiger Global, the document shows.
LFX Trust, managed by Lee Fixel, owns a little more than one million of Peloton's class B stock. Fixel, who formerly led Tiger Global’s private equity business, left the firm in June and resigned from Peloton’s board earlier this month. He has an indirect ownership interest in Tiger and Tiger Global PIP VII Holdings, the filing shows.
Scott Shleifer took over as the head of Tiger Global’s public equity business when Fixel left. Shleifer and Tiger Global founder Coleman are co-portfolio managers of the firm's private equity business.
In 2014, Tiger Global’s private equity arm led the company’s $10.5 million series B funding. The following year, Tiger Global and another venture capital firm led a $30 million series C round of financing.
In August 2018, Peloton announced that Tiger Global and Balyasny Asset Management participated in the company's $550 million series F financing round. According to the IPO filing, Tiger Global entities shelled out a little more than $64 million for more than 4.4 million shares of the series F redeemable convertible preferred stock. They will convert automatically into one share of class B common stock when the IPO is completed.
LFX Trust paid nearly $3.3 million for 227,776 shares of the series F redeemable convertible preferred stock, the filing shows.
