UPDATED 12:24 EDT / OCTOBER 06 2017

INFRA

Shares of data center operator Switch jump 30% following $531M IPO

Switch Inc.’s first day as a public company is off to a strong start.

Shares of the Las Vegas-based data center operator, which hosts infrastructure for many of the world’s best-known tech firms, started trading at $21.70 apiece this morning and have since passed the $22 mark. The jump represents a more than 30 percent increase over the $17 issue price in Switch’s initial public offering on Thursday. It sold 31.25 million shares for $513 million at a market capitalization of $4.2 billion, which has since risen to about $5.6 billion.

The total haul could increase even further if Switch’s underwriters exercise their option to buy 4.7 million more shares for $16 a piece. They have every reason to do so, given that the company is still trading above $22 at the time of writing.

The offering is already the largest IPO for an American company since Snap Inc. went public in March. Switch’s success can likely be attributed in large part to its strong balance sheet. Unlike many of the other tech firms to have the hit the stock market in recent quarters, the company is profitable.

Switch reported a profit of $31.4 million for fiscal year 2016 on $318.4 million in sales. About 13 percent of the company’s revenue during the year came from eBay Inc., its largest customer.

Amazon.com Inc., PayPal Inc. and about 800 other organizations besides the online auction giant rely on Switch’s data centers. The facilitates are all equipped with an array of custom-made systems that were designed in large part by Rob Roy, the company’s founding chief executive officer.

Stu Miniman, the co-host of SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE studio, has had a chance to tour Switch’s main campus in Las Vegas several years ago for an inside look at its operations. “Taking the tour is a geek paradise – it’s like a James Bond villain stronghold: employees dressed in black, metal desks, red and blue LED lighting, and the most technologically advanced data center that I’ve seen,” he wrote. “Switch is not only a showcase for the scalable, dense and efficient power and cooling of cloud solutions, but also has extra capabilities of a networking buying consortium and the US Cloud inter-cloud exchange to enable lots of interesting cloud deployments.”

The IPO will enable CEO Roy to maintain control of the company going forward. As part of the move, Switch is set to adopt a multiclass stock structure under which the shares owned by the founder will have 10 times the voting rights of the common shares traded on public markets.

Image: Switch

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.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU