Ibotta Inc., founded in 2011 in Denver, is an advertising services company. (Incorporated in Delaware)

The letters in the company’s name spell out its “IBOTTA” company values: Integrity Boldness Ownership Teamwork Transparency A Good Idea Can Come From Anywhere

CEO Bryan Leach says in his letter in the prospectus: “The Ibotta experiment began twelve years ago in the windowless basement of an old fire station in downtown Denver. Our capital-light business has allowed us to grow rapidly while increasing profitability over time and capturing the benefits of a multi-sided network that we believe is very hard to replicate. So far, we have given approximately $1.8 billion in cash back to U.S. consumers on their everyday purchases, but we’re just getting started.”

Ibotta’s mission is to Make Every Purchase Rewarding. Our technology allows CPG brands to deliver digital promotions to over 200 million consumers through a single, convenient network called the Ibotta Performance Network (IPN). We are pioneers in success-based marketing: we only get paid when our client’s promotion results in a sale, not when a consumer merely views or clicks on the promotion. We have built the largest digital item-level promotions network in the United States by forming strategic relationships with major retailers which use our digital offers to power their loyalty programs on a white-label basis. Through the IPN, our clients can also reach millions more consumers on our widely used rewards app digital properties, which include the Ibotta-branded cash back mobile app, website, and browser extension (collectively, Ibotta D2C).

We work directly with over 850 different clients, representing over 2,400 different CPG brands to source exclusive offers as of Dec. 31, 2023. Most of our offers cover products in non-discretionary categories, such as grocery, but we also work with general merchandise manufacturers in categories such as toys, clothing, beauty, electronics, pet, home goods, and sporting goods. Over time, our clients have generally ramped up their spend with us, and they rarely drop off our network. In fact, of our top 100 clients, 96% were retained from 2022 to 2023.

Our technology platform uses an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled offer engine that is designed to match and distribute the right offer to the right consumer at the right time. This is possible because we receive a large volume of item-level purchase data through our secure point of sale (POS) integrations with 85 different retailers as of Dec. 31, 2023. Using this data, we form a profile of each consumer based on what they have bought in the past and how they have responded to various price promotions. From there, we build recommenders that are driven by machine learning and designed to create personalized savings experiences for each consumer. The more data we accumulate, the smarter our recommenders become. Whatever our clients’ specific objectives may be – such as encouraging brand switching, shortening purchase cycles, incentivizing consumers to stock up, or promoting around key seasonal events – our platform helps them design a promotional campaign to accomplish their goals.

Ibotta’s technology tracks which offers are selected by consumers, matches offers to the products that have been purchased, logs redemptions, handles the flow of funds, and takes care of all downstream billing and logistics. We perform the function of “air traffic control,” meaning our network enables offers to be matched, distributed, and redeemed across multiple large third-party publishers in a coordinated fashion. This minimizes the risks that offer budgets are exceeded and that consumers redeem the same offer several times for a single purchase (i.e., offer stacking). Our client tools allow CPG brands to set up campaigns, monitor redemption and budget levels, and analyze overall campaign performance – all in a single, convenient interface.

We deliver success-based digital promotions at-scale because we manage a growing, open network of third-party publishers that host our offers. Retailers are among our most important publishers because their apps and websites are frequently visited by consumers with high purchase intent. A retailer may ingest digital offers from Ibotta’s Application Programming Interface (API) and present them to its consumers as part of its own branded loyalty program. We call these partners “retailer publishers.” We believe retailer publishers choose to work with Ibotta because we are a trusted partner that can provide a large universe of exclusive offers coupled with a set of plug and play capabilities that would be difficult for them to create and scale on their own. For example, Ibotta and Walmart Inc., a Delaware corporation (Walmart) entered into a multi-year strategic relationship that makes Ibotta the exclusive provider of digital item-level rebate offer content for Walmart U.S., across all product categories, for online and offline shopping. Consumers redeem our offers on Walmart properties without ever creating an Ibotta account. Instead, they can select manufacturer offers from the Walmart website or app, buy the featured items in-store or online, and instantly earn Walmart Cash which can be applied to future purchases in a Walmart store or on Walmart.com. All CPG brands wishing to run digital item-level rebates on Walmart’s website can only do so through the IPN.

Ibotta also partners with several other leading retailer publishers. For example, Ibotta partners with Family Dollar, a subsidiary of Dollar Tree, Inc., who is in the process of becoming an IPN publisher. We also work indirectly to publish offers on certain retailer properties, including Kroger (powering Kroger Cash) and Shell (powering Shell Fuel Rewards).

In addition to providing digital offers for retailers, Ibotta also makes the same offers available on its own digital properties, which include Ibotta D2C. Since 2012, over 50 million Americans have registered for our free app. Ibotta D2C reaches a highly engaged audience of savings-conscious consumers who want a single digital starting point where they can find cash back offers across a variety of retailers. Many of these consumers decide where to shop based on the availability of deals in different retailers. Once the IPN launched, Ibotta D2C became a publisher on the IPN, meaning it is now one of many nodes through which our digital offers are delivered to the end consumer.

In the future, we believe the IPN may be extended to other publishers across a variety of new verticals. For example, new publishers could include delivery services, banks, or other apps and websites that want to give their consumers access to offers on popular everyday items without having to source those offers from thousands of different CPG brands or secure item-level data from multiple integrated retailers where the offers can be redeemed.

*Note: Net income and revenue are for the year that ended Dec. 31, 2023.

(Note: Ibotta Inc. priced its IPO at $88.00 – $4.00 above the top of its $76.00-to-$84.00 range – and sold 6.56 million shares – the number of shares in the recently upsized deal’s prospectus – to raise $577.28 million on Wednesday night, April 17, 2024. Background: Ibotta Inc. upsized its IPO by about 16.6 percent early Tuesday (April 16, 2024) by increasing the number of shares to 6.56 million shares – up from 5.63 million shares – and keeping the price range at $76.00 to $84.00 to raise $524.8 million, based on the $80.00 mid-point price, according to an S-1/A filing. The company’s portion of the IPO remains the same at 2.5 million shares while the selling stockholders raised the numbers of shares they will sell to 4.06 million shares – up from 3.125 million shares initially. Background: Ibotta Inc. disclosed the terms for its IPO in an S-1/A filing dated April 8, 2024: 5.63 million shares (5,625,000 shares) at a price range of $76.00 to $84.00 per share to raise $450.0 million. The company is offering 2.5 million shares and the selling stockholders are offering 3.125 million shares. Background: Ibotta Inc. filed its S-1 on March 22, 2023, without disclosing terms for its IPO. Proceeds were estimated at $100 million, but some on the Street believed that Ibotta’s IPO could raise more than $200 million.)