Morning Report: Disappearing Unicorns

Morning Report: What happens when you go public and end up losing your unicorn status?

Last year, in a Mattermark analysis, it was observed that a number of companies were in danger of slipping under the billion dollar valuation threshold. De-horned unicorns were dubbed horses, for lack of a better phrase.

It’s a good moment to revisit the topic. Some of the companies rebounded since last year, and some have not.

We first took a look at the stumbling unicorn issue last February, when the playing field for unicorns was far bleaker. The markets were taking body blows, the IPO window was closed, and people were worried. The tremors passed, but the period did whack a number of tech companies.

Tech shops, like Box, Yelp, and Pandora, were trending towards down to the one billion dollar mark. Today, each of those firms is worth more than $2 billion. Crisis averted. On the other hand, the newer entrants are having a rougher time. From the piece:

Disregard Apigee, a firm that sold to Google for under a billion. It wasn’t worth more than that at IPO.

Castlight Health and Mobileiron, however, both 2014 IPOs, remain mired. To wit, according to Google Finance, Mobileiron has rebounded all the way to $4.48 per share, valuing it at $399.3 million. Castlight Health is worth $3.68 per share, putting its value at $388.4 million, again according to Google’s seemingly orphaned financial service.

Castlight Health traded above $39 per share, at one point. Mobileiron once tipped the scales at more than $11.50 per share. (Rough math puts Castlight at a multi-billion valuation at one point and Mobileiron just around $1 billion.)

They are, therefore, horses.

And they could be heading towards having a few more saddles in the corral. GoPro has shed around 90 percent of its peak value, leaving its market cap at a mere $1.21 billion according to Google Finance. Fitbit has lost just under 90 percent of its value, leaving it with a market cap of just $1.28 billion, again via Alphabet’s search engine’s stock tracking website. In the last 12 months, Nutanix has seen its value fall from around $45 per share to just $17.57 in today’s trading. The firm is still worth $2.44 billion today, but its declines are notable.

All this is to show that while the Snap’s get most of the attention, we need to keep an eye on broader IPO cohorts if we are going to decently grok where the market for tech stocks in fact is.

Being public is hard.

Today in the Crunchbase Daily:

Intel spins out McAfee unit

• Intel is spinning out its McAfee security business in a deal that gives private equity firm TPG a 51 percent stake in the company at a $4.2 billion valuation. The move comes seven years after Intel purchased McAfee in a transaction valued at $7.7 billion.

Amino raises $25M for health data service

• Amino, a healthcare big data and search provider, announced that it has raised $25 million in a Series C round led by Highland Capital Management. The San Francisco-based company, founded 18 months ago, provides transparency tools that individuals, employers and providers can use to navigate the healthcare system.

New rules aim to curb H1-B program

• The Trump administration rolled out several policy moves aimed at making it harder for companies to bring overseas tech workers to the U.S. using the H1-B work visa. New guidelines require more information to prove jobs are complicated and require advanced knowledge. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency also announced measures to further deter H-1B visa fraud and abuse.

Cloudera IPO will test unicorn valuations

• Cloudera’s recent IPO filing shows a company with steep losses and rapid revenue growth. A Crunchbase News analysis takes a look at how the company’s recent performance stacks up to its $4.1 billion valuation set three years ago.

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