With public market investors handing out sky-high valuations for software vendors that are coming public, the debutants are under a fair amount of pressure to start strong on Wall Street. So far in their inaugural reports as public companies, the class of 2018 has delivered. All four enterprise software providers – which are growing, on average, nearly 50% – have kept their businesses humming along as they have stepped onto the NYSE and Nasdaq.
In other words, the newly public software companies (Dropbox, Zuora, Smartsheet and DocuSign) are keeping their end of the bargain they struck with investors during their IPO to post growth that’s well above the market average. In return, Wall Street is continuing to value them at a level that’s well above the market average. Valuations for the quartet range from roughly 10-22 times trailing sales, averaging almost 18x. That’s a richer valuation than virtually any of the existing SaaS kingpins, and three or four times the public market valuations for conventional software vendors.
That run of outsized rewards for above-market growth for enterprise software IPOs appears all but certain to end when Domo comes public in a few weeks. The reason? Domo is decelerating. In its most-recent quarter (ending in April), the BI startup reported 32% growth, down from the high-40% range for both the year-ago quarter as well as the full fiscal year. The slowdown at Domo means the company is now growing at only about half the rate of the two other similarly sized enterprise software providers that have come public in 2018, Smartsheet and Zuora.
Of course, Domo faces a more existential concern than how much revenue it adds each quarter. As we noted in our full report on the planned IPO, the company has spent itself into a hole and needs the money from the offering to get out of it. At current rates, Domo has only enough cash in the bank to keep the business going for two quarters. Wall Street knows that and will price it into offering. Unlike this year’s other software debutants, Domo – with its slowing growth and dwindling treasury – will get discounted when it comes to market.
