By Corrie Driebusch
Snowflake Inc.'s shares skyrocketed on their first day of
trading, giving the biggest tech IPO of the year a market value of
$70.4 billion and feeding the recent bout of enthusiasm around
initial public offerings.
Shares of the data-warehousing company closed at $253.93, more
than double their IPO price of $120 and roughly triple what the
company initially targeted a week ago for its offering. Just after
the stock opened, it traded as high as $319. Wednesday's ascent
means the company is now valued at more than five times the $12.4
billion valuation it notched in a private funding round in February
of this year.
"Does this put pressure on us? Of course it does," Frank
Slootman, Snowflake's chief executive, said about the company's
soaring stock price. "It's a vote of confidence. But clearly as a
management group and as an employee base we have to work very hard
to deliver on it."
Hunger for growth in a low-interest-rate environment and a shift
of favor toward technology companies have helped fuel significant
demand for IPOs this year, and Snowflake's first-day performance is
likely to add even more hype. Snowflake is one of the most hotly
anticipated tech offerings amonfg software and cloud-data
investors.
Snowflake's rise is also emblematic of the broader tech sector's
run-up in 2020. The tech-laden Nasdaq Composite Index is up 23% so
far this year, far outdistancing the gains in the S&P 500, even
after a recent pullback.
"When you're in a recession, growth is hard to find. It's a
scarce commodity. When you find something scarce, you're going to
have to pay up," said Kevin Landis, chief investment officer of
tech-focused Firsthand Capital Management Inc., which invests in
public and private companies.
Like many startups to hit public markets, Snowflake isn't
profitable, but it has grown rapidly. For the six-month period
ended July 31, the company lost $171.3 million and had revenue of
$242 million, which more than doubled from the year-ago period. Its
loss for the fiscal year ended Jan. 31 nearly doubled to $348.5
million from the previous year, though revenue almost tripled to
$264.7 million.
The first-day gains were a boon for two notable anchor investors
in Snowflake -- Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and
Salesforce.com Inc.'s investing arm, Salesforce Ventures -- which
each poured $250 million into the company as it went public, buying
shares at the $120 IPO price. Berkshire also agreed to buy an
additional four million shares of Snowflake at the IPO price from
an existing investor, Snowflake said in a filing, significantly
upping the size of Berkshire's investment.
The initial public offering of 28 million shares raised roughly
$3.4 billion for Snowflake, not including additional shares the
underwriters are entitled to buy or the Berkshire and Salesforce
investments. Snowflake said it plans to use proceeds to fund its
operations and potentially make acquisitions.
Snowflake executives participated in a virtual bell-ringing
ceremony to celebrate the start of trading, in what has become the
norm due to the coronavirus pandemic. The stock didn't open for
trading until roughly three hours after markets opened, taking
longer than any other IPO in modern history to pair up orders and
begin trading, according to the New York Stock Exchange, a sign of
rampant demand.
Rick Bradt, portfolio manager for the Neuberger Berman
Disrupters Portfolio, bought shares of Snowflake in the IPO. He
said he expected the stock price to go up when it opened for
trading, but hadn't anticipated it would rise by so much. Still, he
said he can understand the jump.
"We're truly early on in a revolution in tech," he said. "We're
in a world where big data is trying to figure out how big it can
be."
Despite the IPO market going cold in the spring when the
coronavirus pandemic hit with full force, companies going public in
the U.S. had raised more than $78 billion in their IPOs through the
end of last week, on pace for one of the biggest money-raising
years for new issues since the tech boom of 2000, according to data
provider Dealogic.
Mr. Landis of Firsthand Capital said he sees some similarities
between the market now and the tech bubble two decades ago, but he
doesn't expect another reckoning. The largest companies in the
world have ballooned in valuation, making a debut like Snowflake's
less crazy. There is still room for Snowflake to grow, he said,
adding that among investors, "There's a rethinking of what a
company can be worth."
He is familiar with hype around tech stocks: His Silicon
Valley-based firm's tech fund soared during the tech boom and then
suffered when the bubble popped.
Firsthand didn't buy shares of Snowflake in its IPO, viewing it
as a bit too popular, he said, adding that he prefers to purchase
companies that fly more under the radar. Otherwise, they risk
highflying prices like that of Snowflake.
"Right now, there's really not enough growth to go around," he
said.
Mr. Slootman, Snowflake's chief executive, is no stranger to the
IPO process. He successfully steered software company ServiceNow
Inc. and data-solutions company Data Domain Inc. through IPOs when
he served as CEO of each.
Snowflake, based in San Mateo, Calif., offers businesses
cloud-based data management, and corporate customers can share data
across multiple online storage systems using the company's data
warehouse. It had more than 3,000 customers as of July 31,
according to its securities filing.
At its IPO price, Snowflake was valued at roughly $33.3 billion.
That made it the second-largest company to go public in 2020 by
that metric, according to Dealogic, after Quicken Loans parent
Rocket Cos.
Snowflake wasn't the only hot tech IPO on Wednesday. JFrog
Ltd.'s stock jumped 47% after the Israel-based software company
also priced its offering above expectations.
--Dave Sebastian contributed to this article
Write to Corrie Driebusch at corrie.driebusch@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 16, 2020 18:15 ET (22:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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