UiPath IPO on the New York Stock Exchange.
Source: NYSE
UiPath rose 17% on the company’s stock market debut on Wednesday, after the software vendor and its investors raised $ 1.34 billion on the company’s initial public offering. Shares opened at $ 65.50.
The company, whose software helps companies automate repetitive tasks, sold stock on Tuesday night for $ 56 each, above the expected price range of $ 52 to $ 54. At opening price, UiPath had a market value of $ 34 billion.
If insurers buy their allotted shares, UiPath’s offering will become the third-largest ever for a US software company, behind only cloud database vendor Snowflake, which raised $ 3.9 billion in September, and Qualtrics, which raised $ 1.78 in January. billion after SAP. UiPath enters the market at a time of rapid growth as companies from healthcare to energy producers are looking for ways to automate operations in their finance, human resources and legal departments.
Sales increased 81% last year to $ 607.6 million, and the company’s loss fell to $ 92.4 million from $ 519.9 million in 2019. UiPath’s gross margin of 89% is among the highest in software .
While UiPath joins a long list of fast-growing cloud software companies that have gone public in the past three years, its debut comes amid a shift in investor sentiment. After more than doubling in value last year, the WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund, made up of 58 publicly traded cloud software vendors, is down 6.7% this year, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 11% from Tuesday’s close.
One of UiPath’s strengths is its ability to retain customers and encourage them to spend more over time. In the last fiscal year, UiPath reported a net revenue retention of 145%, meaning that the average existing customer increased their spend by 45% from the previous year.
UiPath, which was ranked 50th on CNBC’s 2020 Disruptor 50 list. was founded in Romania in 2005 by Daniel Dines, a former Microsoft engineer. Dines moved UiPath to the US about ten years later and established headquarters in New York. About a quarter of the 2,863 full-time employees are based in Bucharest, Romania.
The stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol “PATH.” Dines owns 88% of the voting shares and is the largest stakeholder, with more than 110 million shares valued at $ 6.2 billion, based on the IPO price and including some sold shares in the offering.
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