Square, the popular electronic payments company, filed its public documents for an initial public offering on Wednesday after doing so confidentially earlier this summer.
The San Francisco-based company, founded and led by Twitter (TWTR) CEO Jack Dorsey, said that it plans to raise $275 million, although that’s likely a placeholder figure that will later be increased.
It plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol “SQ,” with Goldman Sachs (GS) serving as lead underwriter. Other banks working on the deal include J.P. Morgan (JPM) and Morgan Stanley (MS).
Square reports a $77.6 million net loss on around $560.5 million of what it calls “net revenue” for the first six months of 2015, compared to a $79 million net loss on around $372 million in revenue for the same period in 2014.
In 2014, sellers using Square’s credit card processor processed $23.8 billion in payments, from which Square gets a cut. This amount was generated by 446 million individual payments from approximately 144 million credit and debit cards. In the 12 months ending June 2015, over two million sellers accepted five or more payments using Square, accounting for approximately 97% of the company’s total payments volume.
Major shareholders in Square, which has raised nearly $600 million in venture capital funding, include Sequoia Capital (5.4% pre-IPO stake) and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Dorsey owns 24.4% of the company with more than 71 million shares.
Square submitted a confidential filing to federal regulators under the JOBS Act, an option for companies with less than $1 billion in annual revenue. With the latest filing, it’s expected that the company will try to list its stock on the markets before the end of 2015.
Dorsey, as Square’s CEO, puts an even greater spotlight on its IPO. Last week, he became Twitter’s permanent CEO, begging the question of whether he can manage both CEO roles effectively. Square acknowledged the possibility that Dorsey may be distracted by holding two demanding jobs. In the filing’s risk section, it admitted that “This may at times adversely affect his ability to devote time, attention, and effort to Square.”
Wall Street will likely be interested in the evolution of Square’s business. Beyond processing payments for merchants, Square has been focused on selling merchants paid services like analytics, payroll, and cash advances. The company also has a few consumer businesses including, Square Cash, which lets people send money to each other using a mobile app, and food delivery service Caviar. This is still a nascent strategy, however, as 95% of Square’s revenue is made in the payments business.
For more about Jack Dorsey, watch this Coins2Day video: