Cybersecurity startup CrowdStrike seeks to raise up to $414M in IPO
San Francisco Bay Area-based cybersecurity startup CloudStrike Inc. today set the terms of its initial public offering ahead of its debut on the Nasdaq exchange.
The company is offering 18 million shares at between $19 and $23 for a raise of between $342 million and $414 million. CrowdStrike’s valuation on those figures will come in between $3.7 billion and $4.5 billion on debut.
Founded in 2011, CrowdStrike offers endpoint protection, a form of cybersecurity that protects devices such as desktop personal computers, laptops and mobile devices. It does so through a cloud-based platform that’s claimed to stop breaches by detecting attacks, including malware-free intrusions.
As we noted when it first flagged its intent to go public May 14, CrowdStrike is yet-another unprofitable tech unicorn hoping it can raise more money via public markets. CrowdStrike’s financials make for grim reading, with its S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission noting that the company had a net loss of $140 million on revenue of $249.8 million in the year ending Jan. 31.
Much of that loss is said to have been driven by attempts to sign up new customers, with CrowdStrike saying that its sales and marketing costs jumped 66% last year to $172.7 million. The increased loss was attributed to increased headcount as well as a conferences and other marketing events.
CrowdStrike will go public at a time loss-making unicorns, tech startups with a paper valuation of over $1 billion, have had a hard time of late when it comes to investor acceptance.
The IPOs of both Lyft Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. tanked on debut. Not all IPOs have been poorly received. Zoom Video Communications Inc. and PagerDuty Inc. did well post-IPO, but both were notably profitable versus racking up big losses as is the case with CrowdStrike.
Coming into its public offering, CrowdStrike had raised $481 million in venture capital, a figure Crunchbase News rightly describes as “quite the haul for a private company.” Investors include March Capital Partners, Accel, CapitalG, IVP, General Atlantic, InstantScale Ventures, CapitalG, Telstra Ventures, Cloud Apps Capital Partners and Warburg Pincus.
While CrowdStrike’s financials may not be stellar, the company itself is highly regarded in cybersecurity. Dmitri Alperovitch, CrowdStrike’s co-founder and chief technology officer, spoke in June with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, about how the company views the cybersecurity market:
Image: CrowdStrike
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