Palo Alto firm Cloudera files for IPO
Palo Alto data analysis software company Cloudera is the latest Bay Area firm to file for an initial public offering.
The company, which helps other businesses install and use complex data analysis software, indicated Friday that it plans to raise $200 million, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That figure, used to calculate filing fees, may change as the company approaches its offering date.
Cloudera lost just over $187 million on $261 million in revenue for the year ending Jan. 31. That’s an improvement over the previous year, when the company posted a $204 million loss on $166 million in revenue.
Intel holds a 22 percent stake in Cloudera, largely the product of a $740 million investment the Santa Clara chipmaker made in 2014 as part of a funding round that netted Cloudera $900 million and valued it at $4.1 billion.
In addition to established database providers like Oracle and IBM, Cloudera’s competitors include Hortonworks, a Santa Clara company that went public in 2014.
Abhey Lamba, a senior technology analyst with Mizuho Securities in San Francisco, said that Cloudera is regarded
as the largest independent distributor of Hadoop, the data storage and analysis software that Cloudera and Hortonworks help companies use.
Lamba said the $261 million that Cloudera booked in revenue last year puts the company “a year ahead” of Hortonworks, which he said is expected to bring in $240 million this year.
Investors and market analysts expect the volume of IPOs this year to grow after a sluggish 2016, particularly for technology companies. Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, went public in March, as did San Francisco’s MuleSoft, which makes software for businesses.
Okta, a security software company in San Francisco, is also on deck to go public. On Monday, the company announced plans to price 11 million shares between $13 and $15 per share. That would make for a $160 million offering if the shares price at the midpoint of that range.