Tailwind for enterprise tech: Datadog, Ping Identity surge after IPOs
Enterprise technology providers Datadog Inc. and Ping Identity Holding Corp. debuted on the stock market today after raising a combined $836 million in their initial public offerings Wednesday evening.
Datadog, which sells a cloud service that helps companies monitor the health of their applications, raked in $648 million. The total haul could rise to as much as $745 million if the banks that underwrote the IPO fully exercise their rights to buy additional stock.
Datadog sold 24 million shares on Wednesday for $27 each, higher than the target of $24 to $26 it had set in the run-up to the IPO. That price range, in turn, was itself an increase from the $19 to $22 that Datadog was originally aimed for.
The company’s stock jumped an additional 49% when the first trade was logged this morning and is hovering around $37.70 at the time of writing, which is still 40% above the IPO price.
It apparently wasn’t certain that Datadog would go through with the listing. According to Bloomberg, Cisco Systems Inc. offered to buy the company for “significantly higher” than its $7 billion IPO valuation, but was rebuffed. The reason is said to be that Datadog’s leadership believes the company can achieve a higher valuation as a publicly traded firm.
A lot of that confidence likely stems from the company’s finances. Datadog is currently in the red, but it’s growing fast and isn’t too far off from profitability. It generated a $13.4 million loss in the first half of 2019 compared with $500,000 a year earlier, while revenue jumped 79% in the same period, to $85.4 million.
Ping Identity, the other enterprise technology provider that went public today, also received a warm welcome. The company is up more than 26% in trading after raising about $188 million during its IPO.
Ping Identity provides a suite of security products that helps enterprises regulate employee access to applications and manage how external parties such as partners use their data. The company took a more measured to its IPO than Datadog by pricing shares at $15, in the middle of the original $14 to $16 target range.
Even so, the listing represents a big windfall for Ping Identity owner Vista Equity Partners. The private equity firm bought Ping Identity for $600 million in 2016 and sold 12.5 million shares during the Wednesday IPO at a $1.16 billion valuation.
Ping Identity increased sales by 13.5% in the first half of 2019, to $112.9 million, while nearly halving losses to $3.1 million. Annual recurring revenue, meanwhile, rose to $198 million during the 12 months ended June 30 from $159.6 million during the same period in 2018.
Datadog is trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker “DDOG,” while Ping Identity is listed on the New York Stock Exchange as “PING.”
Photo: Nasdaq/Twitter
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