Today marks the one year anniversary of Lending Club’s IPO. It was on December 11, 2014 that Lending Club went public in one of the most significant events ever for this industry. This IPO increased the profile for not just Lending Club but for all of marketplace lending and the industry has surged forward in 2015 partly as a result of this increased profile.
But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for Lending Club in the past year. The actual stock performance hasn’t been good at all for equity investors. Lending Club’s stock still trades below the initial public offering price of $15 per share. Over the last year it has fallen to a low of $10.28 over the summer but has rebounded somewhat since then and currently trades at $13.74 as of writing.
Lending Club continues to focus on growth and recorded $2.2 billion of originations in the third quarter of 2015 as we outline in our Lending Club Q3 2015 earnings report. Our reports for the first and second quarter of 2015 can be found here and here respectively. In 2014, Lending Club originated nearly $4.4 billion total in loans in 2014 and we should see them surpass $8 billion for 2015.
Headlines from Lending Club in 2015 centered around partnerships as well as opening up borrowing and lending to new states. Below are some of the significant partnerships covered on Lend Academy:
- Google and Lending Club Announce Their First Partnership (January, 2015)
- Renaud Laplanche Discusses Lending Club-Alibaba Deal on CNBC (February, 2015)
- Lending Club Signs a Deal With a Consortium of 200 Community Banks (February, 2015)
- Lending Club announces Open Integration, Third Parties Jump On Board (August, 2015)
- Lending Club Running Test To Fund Google AdWords Customers (November, 2015)
In Lending Club’s Q2 2015 earnings call, Renaud mentioned that they will be entering a new product category in the first half of next year and it will be interesting to see which product they will tackle next.
Perhaps the origination growth coupled with existing partnerships, along with a new product category will make for a far different 2016 as far as Lending Club’s stock is concerned. What’s interesting is that CEO Renaud Laplanche has made two sizable purchases of Lending Club stock. Back in August of this year he purchased 50,000 shares at $12.55 and recently on November 30th purchased 60,000 shares at a price of $12. Peter plans to bring Renaud on the Lend Academy Podcast in the near future to talk about the last year and it will be interesting to see what he has to say.
More IPOs on the Horizon?
While it hasn’t been a good year for Lending Club’s stock, it is not an accurate reflection of the vitality of the industry. In fact, although it has been a very quiet 2015 for IPOs in marketplace lending, we are going to see that changing very soon. Yirendai will be going public next week and we may see IPOs from other players such as Elevate Credit, Lufax and at some point LoanDepot and SoFi as well. There are also rumors of Oportun getting ready to file. With all of this activity it should be an interesting 2016 for IPOs and we plan to cover all of them on Lend Academy.
