A week after DocuSign Inc. was reported to have filed confidentially for an initial public offering of stock, the electronic signature company today pulled the trigger.

The S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission is the latest signal that tech IPOs could be on a rebound after several years in the dumps. On Friday, Dropbox Inc. went public in a closely watched offering, and its shares rocketed 40 percent despite coming a day after the market swooned 740 points.

Pivotal Software Inc. filed for an IPO the same day, following a filing by Smartsheet Inc. earlier in the week. Those followed a successful IPO March 16 by Zscaler Inc. Next week, music streaming giant Spotify AB is set to go public as well.

“People have a lot of capital, where are they going to put it?” Robert R. Ackerman Jr., founder and managing partner of the venture capital firm AllegisCyber, told SiliconANGLE recently. “IPOs are one of areas where they hope to find that growth.”

DocuSign specified a $100 million amount for the offering, but that’s a common placeholder that likely has little relation to what ultimately will be raised.

In any case, the IPO faces some challenges. Tech stocks have plunged for two straight days, though its offering likely won’t happen for a few more weeks. The company also is losing money, $115.4 million on revenue of $381.5 million for the year ended Jan. 31 of last year. There are no more recent numbers in the filing, but that loss was down somewhat from $122.6 million in fiscal 2016, on $250.5 million in revenue.

Also, the company, which competes with Adobe Systems Inc. and others, might be seen as something less of a tech company, at least in its business model, than other recent filings, despite investing $300 million in technology and infrastructure for its platform. The vast majority of its revenue comes from professional services, less than 10 percent from subscriptions.

The San Francisco-based company, founded in 2003, now has about 2,255 employees. It counts 350,000 customers and users in the hundreds of millions. Business customers include Box Inc., Salesforce.com Inc. and Comcast, and it also integrates with apps from Microsoft Corp., Google LLC and Apple Inc.

Chief Executive Dan Springer (pictured) took over from longtime CEO Keith Krach in January 2017 after more than a yearlong search. Springer hailed from marketing firm Responsys Inc., which went public in 2011 and was sold to Oracle Corp. in 2013 for $1.5 billion.

DocuSign, which has raised a total of more than $515 million, was valued at $3 billion in May 2015, when it received a $233 million round from Bain Capital Ventures and $45 million from Intel capital.

Other investors include Ignition Partners, Sigma Partners, Frazier Technology Ventures, Google LLC’s GV, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Founders Circle Capital, among others. Sigma is the largest shareholder with a 12.9 percent stake, followed by Ignition at 11.7 percent and now-defunct Frazier Technology Ventures at 7.2 percent.

The company was reported to be in play for an acquisition last year by IBM Corp., Microsoft, Visa Inc. and Oracle. But it clearly managed to hold out for an IPO.

In late December, DocuSign bought the technology assets and hired most of the staff from a machine learning startup called Appuri Inc., with an intention to provide DocuSign customers with more analytics and reporting on their digital transactions on DocuSign’s platform.

Lead underwriters on the deal are Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan. The stock will trade under the ticker symbol DOCU.

Photo: DocuSign