Fox Business reports that “Square”, the mobile payments startup run by Twitter (TWTR) co-founder Jack Dorsey, has postponed its initial public offering plans indefinitely.
According to the report, which references sources familiar with Square’s finances, the company is not ready to go public this year.
The San Francisco-based Square, one of the most buzzed startups about in high-tech, has been on IPO watch for months, with a source telling The Wall Street Journal in November that the company met with banks, including Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) about a 2014 IPO. During the same period, the company announced that former Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar would join its board, lending Square even more credibility on Wall Street.
The report notes however, that in recent weeks “people close to the company have indicated to Wall Street executives that a 2014 offering is unlikely” because Square has run into problems with its ‘runrate’, a key metric that helps put a company’s latest results in perspective. It has been reported that Square is unprofitable, but that 2013 net revenue came in between $110 million to $165 million.
Over the last four years Square has raised more than $340 million in venture capital funding from a diverse group of investors that includes Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Starbucks (SBUX) and Visa (V) as well as big-name backers such as Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Marissa Mayer and Virgin Group head Richard Branson.
Square made news earlier this week for buying BookFresh, a provider of online appointment scheduling services.
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