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Q3 IPO cycle starts strong with Couchbase pricing and Kaltura relisting

by Alex Wilhelm

Today we have new filings from Couchbase and Kaltura: Couchbase set an initial price range for its IPO, something we’ve been waiting for, and Kaltura’s offering is back from hiatus with a new price range and some fresh financial information to boot.

Both bits of news should help us get a handle on how the Q3 2021 IPO cycle is shaping up at the start.

TechCrunch has long expected the third quarter’s IPO haul to prove strong; investors said as 2020 closed that quarters one, three and four would prove very active in terms of public market exits this year. Then the second quarter surpassed expectations, with more companies going public than at least some market observers anticipated.

With that in mind, you can imagine why the newly launched Q3 could prove an active period.

So! Let’s start with a dig into the filing from NoSQL provider Couchbase, working to understand its first price range and what the numbers may say about market demand for technology debuts. Here’s our first look at the company’s value. Then we are taking the Kaltura saga back up, checking into the pricing and second-quarter results from the technology company that provides video streaming software and services.

Frankly, I’ve been waiting for these filings to drop. So, let’s cut the chat and get into the numbers:

Couchbase’s IPO price range

In its new S-1/A filing, Couchbase reports that it anticipates a $20 to $23 per share IPO price. With a maximum sale (Read more...)

What Vimeo’s growth, profits and value tell us about the online video market

by Alex Wilhelm

The spinout of video platform Vimeo from IAC completed today, with the smaller company now trading as an independent entity under the ticker symbol VMEO.

If you missed the news that the internet conglomerate was spinning out the video service, don’t feel bad; it slipped past many radars. But with the company now trading, with our access to its historical results, and with our minds still enthralled by YouTube’s recent financial performance for Alphabet, it’s worth taking a moment to digest the company’s health.

Let’s answer a few questions: How quickly is Vimeo growing, how profitable is its business, and what can its spinout tell us about the larger video market? Recall that Kaltura, another video-powering company, recently put its IPO back into the pipeline after a small delay during what felt like a snap-freeze of the public markets toward the start of the second quarter.

So the Vimeo debut could impact a possible forthcoming unicorn IPO. With that in mind, let’s dig into the numbers.

Growth

From Q1 2020 to Q1 2021, Vimeo’s revenues expanded from $57 million to $89.4 million, a gain of around 57%. That’s a solid pace of expansion, but not a surprising one considering how much digital video the world consumed during the COVID-19 pandemic, a fact that could have bolstered the company’s recent performance.

Over the same time frame, Vimeo’s gross profit grew from $38.6 million to $64.5 million, a gain of around 67%. As you can infer from faster-rising gross profit (Read more...)

Compass CEO hails IPO as a fundraising event amid ‘challenging’ market

by Alex Wilhelm

While several tech companies are opting to delay their IPOs in the face of less-than-enthusiastic market demand for their shares, real estate tech company Compass forged ahead and went public today. After pricing its shares at $18 apiece last night, the low end of a lowered IPO price range, Compass shares closed the day up just under 12% at $20.15 apiece.

TechCrunch caught up with Compass CEO and founder Robert Reffkin to chat about his company’s debut in the market’s suddenly choppy waters for tech and tech-enabled debuts.

Regarding whether Compass is a tech company or a real estate brokerage, Reffkin — who raised the comparison himself — used the opportunity to note that companies like Amazon or Tesla aren’t only one thing. Amazon is a logistics company, an e-commerce company, a cloud-computing business and a media concern all at the same time. Price that.

The argument was good enough for Compass to sell 25 million shares — a lowered amount — at its IPO price for a gross worth $450 million. That, the CEO said, was his company’s goal for its public offering.

Sparing TechCrunch the usual CEO line about an IPO not being a destination but merely one stop on a longer journey at that juncture, Reffkin instead argued that putting nine figures of capital into his company was his objective, not a particular price or resulting valuation.

That might sound simple, but as Kaltura and Intermedia Cloud Communications have pushed their IPOs back, it’s a (Read more...)

Kaltura puts debut on hold. Is the tech IPO window closing?

by Alex Wilhelm

The Exchange just yesterday discussed a downward revision in the impending Compass IPO and the disappointing Deliveroo flotation as signals that market demand for high-growth, unprofitable tech shares could be slipping. Recent news underscores the possibly chilling conditions. This morning, Kaltura, a technology company that provides video streaming software and services, delayed its IPO. JioForMe reports that the postponement comes after Kaltura’s “valuation demand was lower than expected.”

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TechCrunch noted yesterday that Kaltura had not released a second, higher IPO price range. The fact stood out given how hot the public markets had proven in recent months for new tech offerings. Kaltura’s S-1 filing detailed accelerating revenue growth, which at the time we thought would be more than enough to fetch the company an attractive initial public valuation.

It appears that Kaltura was also surprised that it was not trending toward a higher IPO price.

In another sign of how quickly the temperature for new tech flotations may have chilled, digital comms firm Intermedia Cloud Communications also delayed its IPO today. In a release, CEO Michael Gold said the decision is due “to challenging current conditions in the market for initial public offerings, especially for technology companies.”

Challenging current conditions? For IPOs? For tech IPOs? That’s new.

Uh-oh

Axios reporter Dan Primack noted this morning that SPAC formation appears to be slowing. Mix that into the (Read more...)