Lemonade Inc. saw its stock price double Thursday following an IPO that raised $319 million for the online home insurance provider.
The New York City-based company touts its recent vintage and digital focus as a potentially huge advantage in an industry dominated by legacy companies.
"I think that the 21st century has seen so many dramatic shifts just in how the world operates that a lot of incumbents that were founded in the era of the horse-drawn carriage are finding that the assets that they've accumulated over the last century-plus are revealing themselves to be liabilities," co-founder and CEO Daniel Schreiber told Cheddar. "If you got tens of thousands of brokers as a distribution model, is that an asset or is that really a liability? If you've got tech that's been building layer-upon-layer since the 1970s and '80s, is that an asset or a liability?"
Founded in 2015, Lemonade has benefited from considerable private investment, including a $300 million funding round led by SoftBank in 2019, as interest in technology-driven insurance companies, or "insurtech," has grown among investors.
Its main selling point, according to Schrieber, is how the company was built atop what he calls "digital substrate."
"For a company like ours, built from scratch, every license, every line of code in the 21st century for the 21st century, that gives us a bunch of tailwinds," he said.
Lemonade currently offers only homeowners and renters insurance, but it's looking to expand into other areas that appeal to its largely millennial clientele.
The natural next step is pet insurance, said Schrieber, who noted that a half a million Lemonade customers are pet owners. While common in Europe and other parts of the world, U.S. pet owners generally skip it, he added.
"We found a market that is potentially huge, very important to our customer base, and entirely neglected by the industry at-large," he said. "Those are the kind of situations that make the eyes pop."
One potential risk outlined in Lemonade's IPO filing was the current lack of profitability, though Schrieber stressed this was a result of heavy, long-term investments.
"We do think that this is probably the cheapest time in maybe the next 100 years to build the kind of company that we want to build," he said. "There is a window of opportunity where we think we can do a lot of the product building, business building, brand building that we want to do. That window doesn't stay open indefinitely, so making big, bold investments will hopefully produce returns for decades."
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A big-screen adaptation of the anime “Chainsaw Man” has topped the North American box office, beating a Springsteen biopic and “Black Phone 2.” The movie earned $17.25 million in the U.S. and Canada this weekend. “Black Phone 2” fell to second place with $13 million. Two new releases, the rom-com “Regretting You” and “Springsteen — Deliver Me From Nowhere,” earned $12.85 million and $9.1 million, respectively. “Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc” is based on the manga series about a demon hunter. It's another win for Sony-owned Crunchyroll, which also released a “Demon Slayer” film last month that debuted to a record $70 million.
The Federal Aviation Administration says flights departing for Los Angeles International Airport were halted briefly due to a staffing shortage at a Southern California air traffic facility. The FAA issued a temporary ground stop at one of the world’s busiest airports on Sunday morning soon after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy predicted that travelers would see more flights delayed as the nation’s air traffic controllers work without pay during the federal government shutdown. The hold on planes taking off for LAX lasted an hour and 45 minutes and didn't appear to cause continued problems. The FAA said staffing shortages also delayed planes headed to Washington, Chicago and Newark, New Jersey on Sunday.
Boeing workers at three Midwest plants where military aircraft and weapons are developed have voted to reject the company’s latest contract offer and to continue a strike that started almost three months ago. The strike by about 3,200 machinists at the plants in the Missouri cities of St. Louis and St. Charles, and in Mascoutah, Illinois, is smaller in scale than a walkout last year by 33,000 Boeing workers who assemble commercial jetliners. The president of the International Association of Machinists says Sunday's outcome shows Boeing hasn't adequately addressed wages and retirement benefits. Boeing says Sunday's vote was close with 51% of union members opposing the revised offer.
The stunning indictment that led to the arrest of more than 30 people — including Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and other NBA figures — has drawn new scrutiny of the booming business of sports betting in the U.S. The multibillion-dollar industry has made it easy for sports fans — and even some players — to wager on everything from the outcome of games to that of a single play with just a few taps of a cellphone. But regulating the rapidly-growing industry has proven to be a challenge. Professional sports leagues’ own role in promoting gambling has also raised eyebrows.
