Category: IPO

Facebook saves faces with Instagram, at least for now

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

There wasn’t much to be wildly bullish about in Facebook’s initial financial report as a public company on July 26. At least that was the view on Wall Street, as shares of the social networking giant slumped around 10% to their lowest level since the mid-May IPO. The one bright spot, however, is the continued stunning growth of Instagram.

Just ahead of the financial release, Instagram indicated 80 million people are now using the photo-sharing application. That’s more than twice the number of users that Instagram had when Facebook announced the acquisition in April. Additionally, some four billion photos have been shared over Instagram.

Of course, it’s important to note that Facebook hasn’t actually closed the acquisition. Moreover, even when it does close, there won’t be much – if any – direct impact on Facebook’s financial statements from Instagram, which is free to use. (The payoff from mobile advertising, which was the primary driver for the acquisition, is some time off for Facebook.)

Not to be cynical, but we couldn’t help but think that there might be (just maybe) something going on behind the scenes around the timing of Instagram’s boastful release. Investors have a much more jaundiced view of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s impetuous decisions – including his hasty agreement to drop $1bn on Instagram – now that they are losing money on him.

So perhaps it was important for Facebook to show that it is getting an early return on its largest-ever acquisition. That might have been even more important because social gaming company Zynga – whose fortunes are tied to Facebook in many ways – got pummeled on Wall Street after indicating people just aren’t into its games as much as they once were. One specific area of weakness that Zynga indicated: Draw Something, which Zynga picked up as part of its largest-ever acquisition.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

After setting sail for IPO, Avast changes its tack

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

In the half-year leading up to AVAST Software pulling its IPO paperwork on July 25, the market moved steadily against it. A number of high-profile consumer-focused offerings – and, importantly, their subsequent after-market trading – have burned a lot of investors, making them hesitant to buy shares of a security vendor selling entirely to consumers. Additionally, there’s the overhang about the health of Europe, where AVAST has its headquarters and where it still does half its business.

In terms of perception, it also didn’t help AVAST that the IPO of fellow European security software vendor AVG Technologies earlier this year has been a money-loser. AVG priced its shares at the low end of its expected range, and has been underwater since then. The stock is currently changing hands at about $10, one-third lower than where the company initially sold it.

Amid those bearish grumblings on Wall Street, business at AVAST also started to slow. After soaring along with 50% bookings growth in 2011, the pace in the first quarter dipped to 38%. Meanwhile, its margins also ticked lower this year compared with 2011.

Granted, both the revenue growth and the company’s incredibly rich margins are at levels that most companies could only aspire to reach. For instance, AVAST – a company that generates around $100m in bookings with just 207 employees – runs at around a 65% Free Cash Flow (FCF) margin. It currently nets more than $10m each quarter.

But we suspect that business model wouldn’t have gotten much appreciation on Wall Street – at least not initially. If AVAST had gone ahead and priced at the high end of its expected range, it would have debuted at about eight times trailing bookings and 13x trailing FCF. That’s hardly an outrageous valuation, particularly when compared to the rich multiples enterprise-focused vendors have drawn in their recent IPOs. To put a point on that, consider this: at around an $800m debut valuation, AVAST would be worth just one-fifth the amount of the most-recent security IPO, Palo Alto Networks.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

Gigamon eyes IPO even as a market stalls

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

Despite the crosscurrents in the IPO market, Gigamon has put in its paperwork for a planned $100m offering. The network traffic management vendor runs solidly in the black and has been increasing revenue at about a 50% clip in recent years. It finished 2011 with revenue of $68m and, assuming its growth rate continues, will wrap this year at roughly $100m. (Most of the revenue – between two-thirds and three-quarters of overall sales – comes from products, with associated services generating the remainder.)

Eight-year-old Gigamon competes with network heavyweights such as Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks, while a number of other companies have acquired technology that makes them rivals as well. Just in the past two months, Ixia paid $145m for Anue Systems while Danaher added VSS Monitoring. (Subscribers to 451 Research can see our full report on the transaction, including our estimate of the undisclosed terms.)

The proposed offering from Gigamon comes at a time when the IPO market is still struggling to find its footing: On the same day Gigamon put in its S-1, MobiTV withdrew its. And while the market should get a bit hotter this week with the expected debut of Palo Alto Networks, many investors are still underwater on their Facebook shares. The IPO of the fast-growing social networking firm was supposed to serve as a catalyst for the market, but instead deteriorated into a mishandled offering that has sparked lawsuits and losses.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

A tale of two IPO markets as Palo Alto Networks and Kayak hit the road

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

To understand the relative health of consumer and enterprise IPOs in the aftermath of the Facebook offering, consider the rather stark contrast between KAYAK.com and Palo Alto Networks. Both technology vendors set terms for next week’s debuts on Monday, but only enterprise-focused Palo Alto can expect to run with the bulls.

For starters, take a look at the gestation period for each of the offerings. Palo Alto set its range in only its third amendment to its S-1, which it filed just three months ago. (For the record, Palo Alto plans to sell 6.2 million shares at $34-37 each). In contrast, KAYAK’s paperwork has a lot of dust on it. The online travel site originally filed in November 2010 and set its range in its 12th update to its S-1. (For its part, KAYAK intends to sell 3.5 million shares at $22-25 each.)

But the contrast will come out even more sharply in terms of valuation. Although the companies are roughly the same size (Palo Alto did $220m in trailing 12-month (TTM) revenue, compared with $245m in TTM revenue for KAYAK), Palo Alto is more than doubling sales each quarter while KAYAK is posting growth in the mid-30% range.

Wall Street always awards fast-growing companies a premium, but the gap between these two offerings is substantial. Assuming both Palo Alto and KAYAK come to market at the high end of their expected price ranges, the security vendor will begin life with a market cap of about $2.5bn while the online travel site will start life as a public company at a valuation of roughly $1bn. That means Palo Alto will be valued at more than 11 times TTM sales, while KAYAK will garner just 4x TTM sales.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

The IPO machine is back in ServiceNow

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

The Wall Street machine is primed to churn out its next new technology public company, as ServiceNow gets set to debut next week. Sure, the gears of the machine got jammed up a bit in the last offering (Facebook shares are still under water), but it should be humming again with the IPO of the on-demand helpdesk vendor.

Eight-year-old ServiceNow will almost assuredly create more than $2bn in market value overnight and, we suspect, restore the way an IPO is ‘supposed’ to work. (Well, let us qualify that last point: Wall Street speculators – which is how we characterize people who play IPOs, rather than invest in a company for the long term – simply expect new offerings to be priced to pop. And when the shares don’t, well, they dump and run, as Zuckerberg & Co. learned firsthand.)

But we don’t expect any ‘Facebook hangover’ for the ServiceNow IPO. The reason? The company is not only growing solidly (nearly doubling revenue), but is also generating relatively predictable growth, with long-term annual contracts (averaging 2.5 years) and renewal rates that run at almost 100%.

Unlike Facebook, ServiceNow also has the advantage that it is selling into a well-established market, although it is approaching it in a disruptive way. (Meanwhile, the existing IT systems management giants are suffering through tough times: Mercury Interactive has all but disappeared inside a reeling Hewlett-Packard, while BMC has attracted the unwelcome attention of a hedge fund for the company’s ‘underperformance.’)

And finally, there’s the matter of who’s running the two companies and their respective relationship with the would-be buyers of their stock. At Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t be bothered to meet with Wall Street investors during much of the roadshow. On the other hand, ServiceNow CEO Frank Slootman made investors a boatload of money on the last company he took public. He steered Data Domain through its IPO in 2007 and then sold the data de-duplication vendor two years later for roughly three times the value it came public at.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

Qualys eyes an IPO

Brenon Daly1 Comment

Contact: Brenon Daly

Late last year and even into this year, there were rumblings that Qualys may get taken out before it could get out. Rumors were flying that the vulnerability management vendor had attracted M&A interest from two well-heeled shoppers that have both done large information security acquisitions: Check Point Software and Dell.

A pairing with either of the rumored suitors would have made a great deal of sense, adding threat scanning and analysis capabilities to the would-be buyer’s existing portfolio. Check Point needs vulnerability management capabilities as a way to add more information about what happens inside the firewall. Meanwhile, Dell, through its SecureWorks acquisition, not only integrates Qualys’ reports, but also offers Qualys as a managed service.

According to our understanding, interest from both would-be suitors diminished as Qualys held out for a price approaching $1bn. (That would represent a valuation of about 10 times this year’s bookings for Qualys.) So Qualys is now tracking to an IPO, where it is probably likely to debut at a $600-700m valuation but could well grow into a billion-dollar valuation on its own. (See our full report on the Qualys IPO.)

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

Spurred by JOBS Act, iWatt puts in its paperwork

Contact: Thejeswi Venkatesh

Taking advantage of the newly enacted JOBS Act, iWatt recently filed its IPO paperwork in an effort to raise $75m. The power management semiconductor designer has been around since 2000 and has raised more than $50m in venture funding over five rounds. For its next funding, it’s looking to be among the first wave of companies to make it to the public market under the new federal legislation, which lowers the disclosure requirements, among other changes, for IPO candidates. Barclays Capital and Deutsche Bank Securities are co-leading the IPO.

The company has grown at a healthy clip recently, with revenue nearly tripling from $18m in fiscal 2009 to $57m in the 12 months ending March 2012. However, that may not be enough to ensure a warm reception from investors. The concern? Competition. More than 80% of iWatt’s revenue comes from the highly fragmented AC/DC conversion market, where it competes with bigger players such as Power Integrations and Fairchild Semiconductor. The company, which counts Philips and Apple among its customers, says its product has better form factors and lower cost compared to its rivals.

Its chief rival, Power Integrations, currently garners an enterprise value-to-revenue multiple of just over three in the public markets. Slapping the same multiple on iWatt means that the company will debut with a meager market cap of $175m. (Of course, iWatt may well enjoy a premium over its main rival because of its growth rate. Power Integrations flatlined last year and is projected to only grow about 10% this year, while the much-smaller iWatt has bumped up sales more than 60% in each of the past two years.) On the other hand, Wall Street – particularly the big institutional investors – hasn’t shown much demand for any equities lately, much less a new offering from a tiny, unproven startup in a hotly competitive market.

Bazaarvoice buys a down-market voice with PowerReviews

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

Having just minted its public market shares three months ago, Bazaarvoice put them to use in a big way on Thursday. The company, which provides an online customer review platform, announced plans to acquire smaller rival PowerReviews in a deal valued at $152m – $121m of the consideration coming in stock, with the remaining $31m in cash. Terms give PowerReviews control of roughly 10% of Bazaarvoice’s total equity.

The transaction represents a significant bet on being able to move down-market, expanding Bazaarvoice’s voice-of-customer platform to SMBs. To get a sense of the discrepancy in size, consider this: PowerReviews has more customers (1,100) than Bazaarvoice (737), but only slightly more than one-tenth the revenue.

As with any platform, the value increases as the number of users increases. So the play for scale is a relatively sound motivation for Bazaarvoice’s first-ever acquisition. But we would have to add that the scale isn’t necessarily coming cheap. Bazaarvoice is valuing each dollar that PowerReviews generated last year at about $13, while the public market values each dollar that Bazaarvoice generated at roughly $9. Obviously there are differences in the size of the businesses – not to mention the takeout premium – but it’s worth noting the valuation gap nonetheless.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

Facebook’s $16bn IPO: raised above the Valley

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

As IPOs go, Facebook is far more Silicon Valley than Wall Street. That was clear from the social networking giant’s roadshow this month, where 20-something CEO Mark Zuckerberg could hardly be bothered to meet with the institutional investors who do most of the buying of new offerings. (When Zuck did attend the meet and greets with the pinstripes, he wore a hoodie.) And if there was any lingering doubt about it, consider the fact that Zuck stayed at home at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California rather than travel to New York City to ring the opening bell on Nasdaq.

And yet, Facebook is hardly representative of a Valley company – much less a Valley IPO. First, there’s the not-so-small matter of its $100bn market capitalization. But even beyond the valuation, the $16bn that Facebook just raised in its offering is probably more than all the tech companies that go public in the next three years or so will raise, collectively.

Our rough math: Facebook took in $16bn in today’s debut (of that amount, nearly $7bn will go to the company, with the remaining $9bn or so going to company executives and investors). In comparison, the typical tech IPO brings in, say, $100m or maybe $150m. In our surveys, investment bankers and corporate development executives have been consistently forecasting about 25 tech IPOs in each of the recent years. So assuming that rate holds – or even increases slightly – we’re still looking at roughly four years of IPOs to get to the more than 100 offerings to raise the same amount as Facebook.

Even a blockbuster IPO like Splunk had just a month ago raised just dimes compared with Facebook. Underwriters ended up selling 13.5 million shares in the enterprise data search firm at $17 each, which was roughly twice the price of the original range. That meant Splunk raised $321m in its IPO – or only about one-fiftieth the amount Facebook just raised.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

Audience tries to make IPO noise before Facebook debut

Contact: Thejeswi Venkatesh, Ben Kolada

Although Facebook’s road show may have delayed some companies’ IPO itineraries, audio processing vendor Audience is continuing with plans to begin trading on the Nasdaq on May 10. Facebook has dominated recent IPO chatter (a quick Google search for ‘Facebook IPO’ generates more than 312 million results, versus just five million for ‘Audience IPO’), but Audience’s market opportunity should help the company create some noise of its own.

Audience designs digital signal processors and associated algorithms that help separate human voice from background noise, thereby helping to improve voice quality on mobile phones. The technology also helps improve the responsiveness of speech-recognition software. Apple, for example, uses Audience’s chip in the iPhone 4S.

So far, the market has been receptive. The patient firm, which was founded in 2000 but didn’t start pushing product until 2008, has grown revenue fifteenfold over the past few years, from $6m in 2009 to $97m in 2011. That growth story should pay off in spades for its selling shareholders, notably NEA, Tallwood Venture Capital and Vulcan Capital, which collectively own 87% of the company (combined, they poured $75m into the firm).

Audience plans to raise $80m by offering 5.3 million shares in the range of $14-16 per share. Assuming it prices at the midpoint, Audience will garner a market cap of just under $300m, or three times trailing sales. That valuation is in the ballpark of where rival Maxim Integrated Products currently trades in the public markets. J.P. Morgan, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank are leading Audience’s IPO. This is likely to be the last tech IPO before Facebook’s debut.