Cloud communications company Twilio, Inc. went public on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday in a sign that is being interpreted as being a return of happy days for tech initial public offerings (IPOs).

Shares in Twilio, listed as TWLO, floated at $15 a share, up from an initial price guidance of $12-$14 a share, and closed its first day of trading up a remarkable 91.93 percent at $28.79, with a market capitalization of $2.03 billion.

Twilio is the third company to float in 2016, and follows network equipment maker Acacia Communications Inc.’s successful float in May and Dell, Inc. spinoff SecureWork’s not so successful float in April; of note Twilio was the largest tech company to go public since Atlassian Ltd floated in December 2015, and was the best first-day performance for a tech IPO this year.

According to The Wall Street Journal analysts and fund managers attributed the success to a confluence of factors, from the company’s potential growth to the broader stock-market rally on Thursday to T. Rowe Price Group Inc.’s backing the company’s stock offering.

While Twilio went into its float having reported a loss of $35.5 million in 2015, it reported revenue of $166 million for the same period with 88 percent year-on-year growth.

“This is another major milestone for Twilio and a point in time in our long term plan,” Twilio Chief Executive Officer and Founder Jeff Lawson told Venturebeat. “We built the company to the point where the IPO made sense to us, and we’re looking forward to the next decade and beyond as a successful public company.”

Happy days

The success of Twilio’s float will give a clear sign to many tech companies that have been sitting on the sidelines pondering a public float that, underlying market fundamentals, are supportive after a long lull in serious IPOs.

Twilio’s successful float does need to be taken conditionally however: unlike a number of tech floats last year from unprofitable online companies, and ongoing poor performance of companies such as Twitter, Inc., Twilio had relatively low losses with strong growth prospects and the market recognized that.

Companies who are burning money with no short term plans to become profitable may well still be considered poorly by the market should they decide to go public.

All that said Twilio’s float may be the spark the tech industry needed to embrace IPOs again so expect to see more tech firms announcing they will be going public in the months ahead.

Image credit: Twilio