Marc Lore's Wonder has confidentially filed for an IPO. Confidential means you can't see the numbers. Retail traders will buy it anyway.
Here is what's known. Wonder started in 2018 as a plan to cook meals in vans. Now it runs roughly 170 brick-and-mortar locations. The vans did not survive the pitch. The vans were the pitch.
Wonder has raised more than $3 billion. It has spent at least $1 billion on acquisitions. It bought Grubhub for $650 million. It bought Blue Apron for $103 million. Blue Apron. The meal kit company. Somebody sold that, and somebody else wrote a check, and both men went home and slept fine.
The private valuation sits at $9 billion. That's a number investors agreed on in a room, with snacks. The public gets a different room.
CNBC notes weak consumer sentiment has hurt restaurant stocks and the IPO market is shaky. Wonder is a restaurant stock that also owns a drone program. Drone deliveries launch in Texas in January 2027, with Zipline. Nothing calms a nervous market like a flying burrito.
Shares offered: undetermined. Price range: undetermined. Revenue and losses: not public. Lead banks: not named. This is an investment thesis built entirely out of the word "undetermined."
Retail traders will read that and see opportunity. They'll set an alert. They'll tell their group chat it's the next Amazon, because Lore sold Diapers.com to Amazon, and that is how they process cause and effect.
Lore also sold Jet.com to Walmart. Two exits. Strong résumé. A résumé is not a balance sheet, but try telling that to a man who bought a stock because the CEO owns a basketball team.
Lore does own the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Lynx. Great. The Timberwolves can't cook me a pad thai either.
Wonder will list, the price will spike on day one, and some guy named Kyle will put his tax refund into a company that runs ghost kitchens. The kitchens are ghosts. So is the refund.
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