Airtasker comes back to market for more capital to fund US expansion

Just two months after raising $15 million via their IPO, tech company Airtasker (ASX: ART) has returned to the market seeking to raise another $20 million to fund plans to expand into the United States.

The expansion will be facilitated by Airtasker’s acquisition of services marketplace Zaarly and its 597,000 registered users and 900+ service providers (Taskers) however the purchase is only going to cost $3.4m. Of the remainder of funds raised, $16.6m has been flagged for expansion into new US cities as well as the UK.

Seeking $20m from institutional investors, the new raise at $1 per share is also at a premium to the Company’s IPO Offer Price of $0.65 when it listed on the ASX in March 2021.

Upon settlement of the acquisition, Airtasker has immediate plans to upgrade the tech within Zaarly’s app to push rebooking of services which the Company expects to unlock fresh revenue opportunities.

Disclosed details behind Zaarly’s financials were surprisingly light with Airtasker not offering its existing cash flow situation beyond their plans for “maintaining a sustainable cash burn rate” while seeking a larger share of the $500 billion addressable market.

This $20m raise comes one month after Airtasker reported a business update which had its FY21 revenue forecasted to be $24.5m which was upgraded to $25.5m – $26m in the update.

For the Half-Year ended 30 December 2020, Airtasker reported $12.6m in revenue with a $2m net loss after tax.

While the US market is the world’s most lucrative, Airtasker will have significant ground to make up given the increased competition led by Angi Homeservices (NASDAQ: ANGI) which reported USD $1.4 billion in 2020 as the operators of popular service sourcing website Angi which was rebranded from Angie’s List in 2017.

Having listed from its IPO Offer Price of $0.65, ART shares traded as high as $1.97 in the days immediately after its listing before last closing at $1.08 before the announcement of this new capital raise.