They won't use it for anything other than to raise the value of their valuation. If they court a buyer, all of that cash in hand just raised their buying price by $500m.
enterprise value = market cap + debt - cash; don't think the additional cash would 'raise their buying price'. If they could have sold for $10B currently (assuming the valuation TPG is buying in at is what they would sell for), I'd think it would make sense to not take additional funding at the expense of giving up equity, so don't see how this would raise the value of their valuation. Thoughts?
You are correct. Besides, raising x amount of money at y valuation, doesn't mean the company as a whole is worth y. Investors typically get preferred stock, which are worth more. Marc Andreessen had a nice tweet chain about that exact topic yesterday, ending with this one - https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/457017580385873921