Brazilian fintech giant Nubank jumped more than 7% in premarket trading.The shares spiked nearly 15% on its first day of trading.
Berkshire invested in Nubank in June, taking a $500 million stake valuing the company at $30 billion, a person familiar with the matter said at the time.
Nubank, the world’s biggest standalone digital bank, had more than 48 million customers across Brazil, Mexico and Colombia as of September. It provides easy-to-use financial products that come with relatively low fees.
The company said it had a $99 million loss on revenue of $1.06 billion for the nine-month period ended Sept. 30. Interest income accounted for $607 million of that revenue, with fees and commissions making up the remainder.
Nubank warned investors to brace for “short-term profit implications” from the firm’s expansion push.
Chief Executive Officer David Velez will own a stake in the company worth about $8.9 billion at the IPO price. His co-founder, Cristina Junqueira, has a stake worth $1.1 billion.
Before creating the startup, Velez spent two years at Sequoia, trying to find an investment in Latin America. Instead he left with an idea of his own.
Velez, who’s Colombian, had a grueling experience opening a bank account in Brazil and enlisted Junqueira, fresh off a stint at Itau’s credit card unit, to help him create an alternative.
Brazil, like much of Latin America, is plagued by expensive financial services that are available to only a limited portion of the population. Century-old banks dominate the market beset by bureaucratic barriers. Still, a high percentage of the region’s 700 million people own mobile phones, making it an attractive target for digital banks.
Velez, whose Class B shares come with 20 votes each compared with one apiece for the Class A shares sold in the IPO, will hold 75% of the company’s voting power after the offering. Junqueira will control 9.3% of the voting power. Neither planned to sell shares in the offering, according to the filings.