Bazaarvoice Files for IPO
31st August 2011 · 0 Comments
In the “you knew this was coming” category, Bazaarvoice filed for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of it’s stock today. The news is being covered by TechCrunch and The Statesman. The company is one of the fastest growing in Austin, going from 70 employees in April 2007 to over 600 today. In conversations with company co-founder and CEO Brett Hurt, he has always characterized the company’s financial condition by saying that they could stop growing and be a profitable company any time they wanted to. But as long as the market for their software continues to be strong, the company will invest in losses.
The offering is anticipated to raise around $80M in cash for the company. The underwriters are some of the top names on Wall Street including Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank Securities, and Credit Suisse Securities. Typical IPO’s are priced in the $12 – $14 per share range, and with BV’s 46M shares outstanding that would be a total company valuation of over half a billion dollars. An offering price has not been set, so I’m totally guessing and using round numbers, but it sounds about right to me.
This offering would make Austin Venture’s stock worth over $200M. Insiders call this type of deal a “fund maker” meaning whichever fund invested in the company would provide a solid return to their limited partners. In reality investments have probably been made from several year’s funds, which can prop up the returns in lower performing funds.
If you enjoy reading long-winded financial infoporn, you can find the registration statement on the SEC website here. It shows things like the company’s revenue growth rate in the past three years from $22M to $38M to $64M.
So, Austin entrepreneurs and other members of the tech community, let’s go out and build a few more great companies like this, shall we?
Republished from AustinStartup.com
