Elevate Credit, an online lender, has temporarily delayed an initial public stock offering because of difficult market conditions. The firm was set to price its initial public stock offering Thursday.
Elevate Credit, based in Fort Worth, Texas, makes unsecured personal loans to subprime borrowers. The company was spun out of Think Finance Inc., a former lender that is now a technology provider to the online loan industry, in 2014.
Elevate Credit’s decision is the latest blow to an IPO market that has been struggling for more than a year and could mean more trouble ahead for a long list of other financial- technology and technology companies that raised money privately at high valuations and are weighing this year's offerings.
Shares of already public online lenders are down even more heavily than bank stocks this year. LendingClub Corp. and On Deck Capital Inc., which went public in December 2014, are both down more than 25% so far in 2016 after a tough 2015 performance. That is well beyond the 15% decline for the KBW Nasdaq Bank index.
The only other deal scheduled this year, Shimmick Construction Co., delayed its offering last week. Shimmick is now scheduled to price Thursday.Late last year, LoanDepot Inc., a mortgage and online consumer lender, indefinitely postponed its IPO just before it was about to price.
