The stock of SurveyMonkey, provider of online services used to conduct surveys, jumped more than 60% in its debut on the Nasdaq Wednesday, opening at $18.75 per share.
The company priced on Tuesday an offering of 15 million shares, up from 13.5 million shares. They were priced at $12 apiece, above the expected range of $9 to $11.
SurveyMonkey reported a net loss of $27.2 million for the first six months of 2018, down from a loss of $19.1 million for the same period last year. Among other things, SurveyMonkey plans to use the IPO proceeds to SurveyMonkey plans on using the proceeds to pay down debt and meet income tax obligations related to a restricted stock unit (RSU) settlement.
The company trades on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol SVMK.
Eleven other initial public offerings are expected to price this week, including six from the biotech sector. Entasis Therapeutics is offering 4.4 million shares at a price range of $16 to $18, and Arvinas, a cancer drug company, plans to offer 6.7 million shares at $12 to $14.
Three IPOs are China-based companies, including electric scooter startup Niu Technologies, which filed Monday for an initial public offering seeking to raise $150 million. CooTek, which develops keyboard software for mobile devices, is offering 4.35 million American depositary receipts at a price range of $12 to $14. It too is based in China.
The SurveyMonkey IPO comes amid congressional scrutiny of Silicon Valley companies over privacy concerns and their role in political disinformation campaigns.
“We pay great heed to our customers’ data,” Chief Executive Officer Zander Lurie said in an interview on CNBC. “We all have to be on the forefront.”
The company said it handles more than 20 million answers from more than 3 million people every day.
The company’s main investors were Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Tiger Global Management. Sandberg’s late husband, Dave Goldberg, was at one time chief executive officer of SurveyMonkey.