Learn how to invest in Sweetgreen stock when the IPO arrives.
Increase your chances of receiving an allocation by opening an account with a broker that offers IPO investing to eligible customers. Long-term buy and hold investors may prefer M1 Finance.
Sweetgreen Stock IPO News
05/11/2021: Salad Chain Sweetgreen Is Planning a U.S. IPO This Year
01/04/2020: In a Burger World, Can Sweetgreen Scale Up?
11/20/2019: Sweetgreen CEO on Delivery Rollout and Going Public
04/17/2019: Inside the Unlikely Journey of Cult Salad Brand Sweetgreen
11/15/2018: How Sweetgreen Got to $1 Billion
What is Sweetgreen?
Sweetgreen is a fast-casual restaurant chain that provides customers a diverse menu of freshly-made salads.
Three undergrad students started the restaurant in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington D.C., shortly after graduating from the nearby university.
The restaurant provides inexpensive meals made from sustainably sourced seasonal ingredients, branding itself as a conscious corporation, aiming for a win-win-win with the company, customer, and community.
The company mission:
Our mission is to inspire healthier communities by connecting people to real food.
Though Sweetgreen is a restaurant company first, it’s known for leveraging technology and data to strengthen customer relationships and streamline supply chains.
The company is now headquartered in southern California and operates restaurants in San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Chicago, DC, and New York.
Is Sweetgreen Stock Publicly Traded?
No, Sweetgreen is still privately owned. The shareholders include founders, early investors (venture capital firms), and employees.
You can find a current list of Sweetgreen investors at Crunchbase.
Sweetgreen has raised at least $478 million since 2007. The most recent raise was $156 million in September 2019, valuing the company at more than $1.78 billion
Prominent venture capital investors include Revolution (Steve Case of AOL), Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, Franklin Templeton, and D1 Capital Partners.
When is the Sweetgreen IPO Date?
The Sweetgreen IPO date is currently unknown.
In November 2019, Sweetgreen CEO said of an IPO in an interview with The Street, “It’s something that we’re considering, but nothing in the near future,”
In January 2020, The New York Times reported that Mr. Neman said an initial public offering should happen “eventually, probably, at some point.”.
On May 11, 2021, Bloomberg reported the Sweetgreen IPO date could come as early as the end of 2021. The company is working with Goldman Sachs on the listing.
We won’t get a better sense of when the Sweetgreen IPO date until one of the following things happens:
- New information about the Sweetgreen IPO date leaks to the financial press
- Sweetgreen announces (or leaks) that it filed an S-1 confidentially with the SEC
- The SEC releases a publicly-available Sweetgreen S-1 filing
- Announcement (or press leak) of a forthcoming SPAC merger
- Sweetgreen selects a lead underwriter or banking partner for the IPO (announced May 11th, 2021)
Those types of announcements would suggest a public offering is within six months or fewer.
Even when the company and SEC publicly release the S-1 filing, we still won’t know a firm date. However, the IPO date typically occurs a month or two after the S-1 is released to the public.
Bookmark this page for the latest Sweetgreen IPO news.
Will There be a Sweetgreen SPAC Acquisition?
A SPAC is a special purpose acquisition company, also known as a blank check company. They are shell companies designed to help established businesses go public without a traditional IPO.
The SPAC company merges with the established company and takes on the established company’s name. It’s also known as a reverse merger.
So many SPACs have gone public in the past 12 months that it’s likely Sweetgreen receives pitches each week.
This could put Sweetgreen in a strong position to go public via a SPAC. However, there are no indications from the founders or investors they are interested.
Using a SPAC to go public allows the company to skip the complicated and expensive IPO process.
Not all companies are ready to IPO, making SPACs an attractive alternative to an IPO where the company can still raise new funds.
However, the more established a company is, the more resources it can hire to facilitate the traditional IPO process.
When early investors and employees need liquidity, and the company generates more significant revenue, the company will decide on the best way to go public — a traditional IPO, direct IPO, or SPAC merger.
What is the Sweetgreen Stock Price?
Since Sweetgreen is not publicly traded on a stock exchange, there is no Sweetgreen stock price yet.
The company and its underwriters won’t publicize an estimated IPO price range until after the initial S-1 filing is made with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
What is the Sweetgreen Stock Symbol? Sweetgreen Ticker?
Sweetgreen has not yet submitted public filings to the SEC. Therefore, it is not yet known what the Sweetgreen stock symbol will be. We can only speculate.
Here are some possibilities that appear to be available in the U.S.:
- SWGN
- STGN
- SGRN
- SWTG
Will Sweetgreen Stock be a Motley Fool Stock Advisor Recommendation?
We won’t know until after the IPO if Sweetgreen will be a Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation. However, Sweetgreen fits the mold of high-growth, disruptive business models that the Fool typically recommends.
Though the restaurant industry is a tough business, Sweetgreen is reported to have operating margins near Chipotle (CMG), a long-time fool recommendation.
Sweetgreen will undoubtedly be on their radar once public.
When the Motley Fool recommends a company, there is usually an immediate spike in the price. Fool newsletter subscribers are notoriously long-term-minded and rarely sell, meaning the stock price will continue to rise.
Sweetgreen may also receive a recommendation by the Motley Fool Rule Breakers (Rule Breakers review) newsletter or other premium services.
Both services have handily beaten the broader market since the early 2000s.
Read this Motley Fool Stock Advisor review to learn about the stock selection methodology and about how you can participate in excellent returns.
Stock Advisor is currently half-off at just $99 for an annual subscription.
Can you Invest in Sweetgreen Stock? Four Potential Ways
Generally, it’s challenging to acquire shares of high-demand IPOs. Most investors will need to settle for buying the stock after it begins trading.
IPO underwriters typically give their best customers access first, then allocate shares to certain institutions and brokers often tied by professional relationships.
When the largest brokers receive IPO shares, they divvy them up amongst their eligible customers, prioritizing their most valued customers first (wealthiest).
For high-demand deals, most investors will not get shares.
In recent years, a few brokers have partnered with the IPO investing app ClickIPO to give access to individual investors based on a proprietary rating instead of assets under management.
The ClickIPO rating, known as the Investor Score, rates higher those investors who hold IPO shares instead of flipping them.
Though ClickIPO has not demonstrated the ability to allocate app users with high-demand IPO shares, they’ve executed dozens of lesser-known IPOs on its platform.
For individual investors without a high net worth, ClickIPO and its partner brokers TradeStation and Webull are the most likely chance of participating in IPOs since the demise of LOYAL3 and Motif Investing.
With that, here are four potential ways to own Sweetgreen Stock:
- Buy Sweetgreen stock after it begins trading
- Buy Sweetgreen stock in the Sweetgreen IPO through a broker
- Acquire through a directed share program during the IPO
- Attempt to acquire Sweetgreen stock in pre-IPO secondary marketplaces before the IPO
1. Buy Sweetgreen stock after the Sweetgreen IPO
Since acquiring IPO shares is almost always challenging for individual investors, the easiest way to own Sweetgreen stock is to wait for the IPO to complete.
Realistically, unless your brokerage account is worth more than $1 million and your broker regularly receives IPO allocations, you are unlikely to get in on high-demand IPOs.
In some cases, patient investors can buy the stock at or below the IPO price. This is not always true.
The Beyond Meat IPO, for example, soared and never looked back. But Uber, which many predicted to rise steeply, actually fell on the IPO date.
Spending significant effort to acquire IPO shares may not be worth it in the end. You may also spend time and effort to obtain shares but only receive a small allocation, limiting upside gain.
Though IPOs can provide one-day gains north of 20%, even up to 100% in rare cases (such as Airbnb and Doordash), the most significant gains will come during the decade following the IPO if the company is genuinely disruptive.
Take, for example, Netflix, Amazon, or Tesla. You could have bought the stock years after the IPO and still experienced gains of more than 1,000%
If you’re an investor that wants to buy Sweetgreen stock for the long-term, consider opening a position after the IPO and averaging down if the stock falls.
Short-term traders may angle to acquire IPO shares and hope for a short-term pop.
2. Buy Sweetgreen stock in the Sweetgreen IPO through a broker
Ambitious investors can position themselves to invest in the Sweetgreen IPO once it arrives.
Your chances of getting IPO shares depends on four factors:
- IPO demand
- Your broker and eligibility
- Your assets under management (AUM) at the broker
- Propensity to flip shares
As IPO demand increases, the chances of receiving IPO shares decreases. Therefore, the IPOs that are most interesting to the masses are the hardest to access.
Most online brokers do not offer IPO shares. Check directly to see if yours does, or look at our list of best brokers for IPO investing.
Legacy brokers, such as Fidelity and Charles Schwab, have minimum eligibility requirements and penalties for flipping shares (selling shortly after the IPO).
But even if eligible, the brokers must sub-allocate whatever limited shares they receive from the IPO underwriters.
This process is non-transparent, but priority is likely given to the wealthiest investors first.
For example, if your account balance is $500,000, and that makes you eligible according to terms, the broker may only have enough IPO shares to distribute to customers with assets of $3,000,000 or more.
This brings us to ClickIPO.
ClickIPO is a smartphone app that partners with TradeStation (through the app) and Webull (directly) to deliver IPO access to ordinary investors.
There is no minimum account value required.
ClickIPO prioritizes IPO share distribution by its Investor Score, which measures how likely an investor is to flip shares. Investors more likely to flip shares are considered to be less desirable IPO beneficiaries (in theory).
Therefore, ClickIPO offers a value proposition to underwriters and newly public companies.
Though quick profits from IPOs is one way the large underwriter reward whale-sized clients.
Click here to subscribe to Access IPOs and download the free 15-page eBook, How to Invest in IPOs – A Fundamental Guide for Ordinary Investors, which provides more detail on this dynamic.
Joining a broker that offers access to IPOs does not guarantee a share allocation, especially in high-demand IPOs. You are probably better off waiting for the company to start trading after the IPO.
3. Potential Directed Share Program
Another possibility is a directed share program.
Sometimes when companies file their S-1 SEC filing (to begin the IPO process), they include a directed share program for executives, affiliates, and other people who helped the company grow.
Since Sweetgreen’s success is due, in part, to its dedicated customer base, it’s possible the company may offer IPO shares to frequent diners.
This has happened before.
Uber offered shares to drivers that completed a certain number of trips.
GoPro offered shares to its email list.
Airbnb offered IPO shares to hosts.
Considering the intimate relationship Sweetgreen maintains with its customers, a directed share program is something to watch.
Pay attention to the news, this page, and your email in case it happens.
4. Attempted to acquire shares in pre-IPO secondary marketplaces
Founders, early employees, and investors often find themselves in a difficult predicament. They own valuable shares of a company that doesn’t trade publicly.
These shareholders might have multi-million dollar net worth’s because of their stock holdings, but the stock is not liquid because it doesn’t trade on an exchange.
A few platforms have evolved to gives these individuals a way to liquidate their holding before the IPO. Two of the more prominent sites are EquityZen and Sharespost.
Both sites bring liquidity to an otherwise illiquid asset. Accredited investors (those with invested assets > $1,000,000) may join these sites and attempt to buy these companies’ shares when they become available.
The shares are only offered to accredited investors because the company’s financials are not publicly filed with regulators yet, increasing the investors’ risk.
For high-profile companies, demand is high, lowering your chances of acquiring shares. The author considers this a low-likelihood way to acquire shares. However, some readers have written with success stories buying shares this way.
Where can I find the Sweetgreen S-1 Filing?
The Sweetgreen S-1 filing won’t be publicly available until released. Once it is public, we’ll post it here.
You can find a real-time SEC feed of the latest IPO filings from other companies on the recent S-1 filings page.
Best Brokers to Buy Sweetgreen Stock
What is the best online brokerage for buying Sweetgreen stock?
If you want to attempt to participate in IPOs, TradeStation and Webull are the best low-minimum investment IPO brokers for investors with assets under $100,000.
See the complete list of best brokers for IPO investing here.
Joining a broker that offers access to IPOs does not guarantee a share allocation, especially in high-demand IPOs. You are probably better off waiting for the company to start trading after the IPO.
Long-term buy and hold investors may prefer a broker not as geared toward frequent trading.
As an individual investor, you’ll want to open an account with a commission-free online broker. That way, you’ll invest most of your money instead of waste it on fees.
I’m a big fan of the online brokerage M1 Finance. M1 Finance is a reliable and robust, no-fee online broker for beginner to advanced investors.
As your investing skills and portfolio mature, M1 is one of the best platforms to scale.
Investing in stocks is 100% free on the platform. They also offer an integrated checking account and low borrowing rates. Read my complete M1 Finance review here.
The platform is more intuitive than old-school brokers because it’s built on a modern technology platform. You create portfolio “pies” that contain all the stocks and ETFs you want to own and in what percentages. Add Sweetgreen stock to your portfolio pie once it begins trading.
M1 Finance does not offer IPO access. But it’s my favorite for long-term investing, which is my preferred strategy for disruptive IPO companies.
* Disclosure: The web page contains affiliate links from our partners. If a reader opens an account or buys a service from a link in this article, we may be compensated at no additional cost to the reader. Opening an account with a broker that provides access to IPOs does not guarantee the customer allocations of specific IPOs. The author is long TSLA, ABNB, CMG, BYND.