It would appear the IPO market is back, and with a vengeance.
After a slowdown in October that had companies delaying and withdrawing their public offerings, Bay Area tech companies are hopping back on the IPO train. On Monday, big data companies New Relic and Hortonworks joined the frenzy.
New Relic in San Francisco, one of the darlings of the sector, will raise at least $100 million in its public debut, which will likely happen after the holidays. The company makes cloud-based software for businesses to collect, store and analyze massive amounts of data in real time. Founded in 2008, it has 250,000 users and more than 10,500 paying business customers, and has already expanded internationally with an office in Ireland. Revenue more than tripled from 2013 to 2014, from $29.7 million to $63.2 million, although its losses doubled to more than $40 million for the year ending in March.
Hortonworks in Palo Alto also offered a $100 million placeholder in its filing on Monday. The company, founded in 2011, offers a big data processing platform on which businesses can use various visualization and analytics tools to learn more from their data. It has just 292 customers and $11.4 million in revenue for 2013. While its sales are a fraction of New Relic s, its losses are greater — topping $46 million last year, up from $19.7 million the year before.
Both IPOs will be updated with the number of shares and price per share in a later filing.
Photo: Offices at New Relic in San Francisco on June 27, 2014. John Green/Bay Area News Group.
