UPDATED 00:56 EDT / APRIL 06 2017

CLOUD

Tech unicorn Okta raises target again ahead of Friday’s IPO

San Francisco-based security services company Okta Inc. has raised the target for what it expects to raise in its initial public offering to $215 million.

The company, which plans to sell shares to the public starting Friday, had originally filed for a $100 million offering in March, though that amount was widely seen as a placeholder.

Okta is one of several enterprise software companies to go public so far this year, including MuleSoft Inc. and Alteryx Inc. Other enterprise companies have filed to go public as well, including Cloudera Inc. Investors are hoping this represents a resurgence of IPOs, which were few and far between last year.

A so-called unicorn, a company with at least a billion-dollar valuation, Okta claimed in its S-1 filing that it’s well-positioned in the $18 billion global cloud-based security services market. Okta’s platform enables medium and large enterprises to securely access applications and data and manage employee identity, in its own words to “securely connect people to technology, anywhere, anytime and from any device.” Some of its bigger-name clients include Microsoft Corp., Amazon Web Services, Adobe Systems Inc., Google Cloud Platform and 20th Century Fox.

On Wednesday, the company raised its expected price range of between $13 and $15 a share to between $15 and $17, with 11 million shares up for grabs. Underwriters for the offering are Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Allen & Co.

Started in 2009, Okta has seen rapid growth, achieving a valuation of $1.2 billion with a funding in 2015. Investors then included Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital as well as initial investors that included Khosla Ventures.

Okta currently has around 2 million users of its services daily at more than 3,100 clients. For three years running, Gartner has named Okta as an industry leader in Identity Access as a Service. In those three years, its revenues have grown from $41 million to $85.9 million to $160.3 million.

But like some other companies that have gone public, mostly notable Snapchat creator Snap Inc., Okta is still losing big bucks. It recorded net losses of $59.1 million and $76.3 million in 2015 and 2016.

The company plans to trade on NASDAQ with the ticket symbol OKTA.

Image: Okta

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