Year’s first tech IPO flops: Dell SecureWorks misses price target
Five months since the start of the year, it appears that Wall Street still hasn’t fully regained its appetite for tech IPOs. Dell Inc. experienced the market’s reduced interest first hand yesterday after putting shares of its SecureWorks subsidiary up for grabs and raising only $112 million out of the minimum $140 million that it’d hoped to bring home.
The gap widens even further when comparing the sum against the high end of the company’s original $15.5-17.5 percent stock price target, which would have valued the public offering at about $160 million. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s not too big of a loss for Dell. For starters, the $48 million miss represents only a small fraction of the vendor’s annual sales. And according to the NYT, the eight million shares that were put on the auction block didn’t come from its own controlling stake in SecureWorks but rather the subsidiary itself, which will also take all of the proceeds.
In other words, Dell can try and wait for the network protection provider’s stock price to increase in public trading before starting to sell off its shares so as to achieve a bigger return. However, that won’t come as much consolation for the rest of the market, particularly the other technology firms that had hoped to start trading this year but are holding off their plans until the situation improves. Many of those companies are so-called unicorns that have similar financial strategies as the one SecureWorks is pursuing, which some blame as one of the reasons for its disappointing public offering.
The company is increasing its revenue by double-digits every year, but at a significant cost that is obstructing its path toward profitability. SecureWorks lost $38.5 million in fiscal 2015 and a whopping $72.38 million during fiscal 2016 as part of its growth efforts. Amid the current uncertainty in world markets, it’s no wonder Wall Street is hesitant to invest.
Image via Wikimedia
A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:
Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.
One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.
Join our community on YouTube
Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.
THANK YOU