Despite this week’s rout in tech stocks, enterprise software company Anaplan is going ahead with its market debut on Friday after pricing the initial public offering at the high end of its range.
Anaplan’s announcement Thursday that it would offer 15.5 million shares at $17 per share came hours after the Wall Street Journal reported that Tencent Music would be delaying its IPO amid the market sell-off that pushed the Nasdaq to its lowest close since May.
The offering raised $263.5 million, with the $17 pricing giving Anaplan an implied valuation of $2.07 billion.
“While recent trading signs are ominous, Anaplan is riding a longer-term wave that’s seen cloud companies hit the public markets with fanfare,” CNBC said, citing the IPOs this year of Dropbox, Docusign, Avalara, and Elastic after a lull in tech IPO activity in 2017.
Anaplan is betting that its “connected planning” concept will make it as attractive to other investors as other cloud software companies have been lately. Connected planning software helps companies manage their finances, sales and workforce. Anaplan’s customers include Adobe, Dish, Sonos, United Airlines, and Del Monte.
“We believe connected planning is the next essential cloud category,” the company said in its prospectus.
Anaplan on Wednesdy had raised its price range to $15 to $17 per share from $13 to $15 per share, suggesting strong demand for the stock.
“This elevated pricing range is indicative of an extremely healthy appetite for Anaplan’s shares among public equity investors,” Rohit Kulkarni, head of research at SharesPost, told Investor’s Business Daily. “This is clearly a golden time for private tech growth companies to go public.”
For the six-month period ended July 31, Anaplan reported revenue of $109.4 billion, up 41% from the year-ago period, and a net loss of $47.2 million.
The company is going public with a new CFO, Dave Morton, who resigned from Tesla on Sept. 4 after only a month at the troubled automaker. CEO Frank Calderoni and Chief Revenue Officer Steven Birdsal are also new to the company.