Corporate travel and expense management platform Navan tanked by 20% in its first trading day on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "NAVN" after its initial public offering.
The Navan IPO, which priced on Wednesday night, valued the business-to-business software vendor at $6.2 billion, raising $923 million and with shares settling at the midpoint of its deal range, $25 per share. The valuation was roughly $3 billion less than where private investors last valued Navan in 2022 in a $300 million round.
Launched by CEO Ariel Cohen and co-founder Ilan Twig in 2015, Navan set out to disrupt a business travel sector where incumbents relied on clunky legacy tools and fragmented workflows.
The Palo Alto-based company, formerly called TripActions, refers to itself as an "all-in-one super app" for corporate travel and expenses.
Customers include Geico, Zoom, Lyft, OpenAI, Unilever, Anthropic, Adobe, Christie's, and Blue Origin.
"We really care about the traveler, the road warrior," said CEO Ariel Cohen in a CNBC interview on IPO day.
Navan ranked No. 39 on this year's CNBC Disruptor 50 list, and has made the list for two consecutive years.
Navan's big day is also a huge win for venture investor Oren Zeev, who runs the rare one-person VC firm and at the IPO price was expected to have a stake in Navan worth over $1 billion, having first invested in the founders in 2013, two years before Navan came to life. "It's a first for me," Zeev told CNBC of having an early-stage investment result in a $1 billion payday. He has no office, no assistant, no one on payroll at all, but a portfolio of 50 companies (40 where he sits on the board, including Navan).
Cohen said Navan's focus on business travel and expensing allows it to not only support the largest companies in the market but companies with as few as 10 employees. The idea, regardless of size, is that any companies with travelers can make sure "they are not wasting their time," he said in his "Squawk Box" interview.
According to Cohen, it can take on average 45 minutes to book a complex business trip using traditional methods, but with Navan the process has been whittled down to seven minutes, and has led to 15% savings for customers.
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