by Brenon Daly
Even as other VC-backed unicorns have stumbled recently in ‘down round’ IPOs, Fastly more than doubled its private-market valuation as it came public Friday. The CDN startup priced its offering at the top end of the expected range and then surged some 50% in aftermarket trading.
Fastly’s strong debut continued the recent bull run of enterprise tech IPOs, a sharp contrast to several high-profile consumer tech offerings that have sunk underwater. It also sets up a rather rich valuation for the company compared with its primary rival, which went public two decades ago.
With its newly issued shares changing hands on the NYSE at about $24 each, Fastly is valued at more than $2bn. That’s a significant step up in value from its final venture funding, which came last summer. Although a bit deep in the alphabet, the series F round had Fastly’s investors paying slightly more than $10 per share.
The company posted $145m in sales in 2018 and is likely to bump that up to roughly $200m this year, assuming it holds its current high-30% growth rate. That means Wall Street is valuing it at a mid-teens price-to-sales multiple, on a trailing basis. Or another way to look at it: on a relative basis, Fastly is worth three times more than CDN industry stalwart Akamai, which trades at almost 5x trailing sales.
