Morning Report: Yext's IPO Proves (Again) How Open The IPO Window Remains

Morning Report: Yext’s well received public offering demonstrates how open the IPO window is at the moment. Obvious deduction: go public now.

A little over a year ago, the temperature of the tech industry was low. A short-lived gyration in the Nasdaq closed the IPO window and warnings of an impending winter abounded.

Today, it’s the opposite. IPOs are rolling along, Q1 2017 venture activity is back up from a fourth-quarter dip, and the public markets are looking fit. It was under that particular climate that Yext went public this morning, after pricing above range.

Quickly, before we get into why the Yext IPO matters, we need to understand how it is performing in its first public session. Happily, VentureBeat’s Harrison “Aperol Spritz” Weber did the heavy lifting this morning from his Brooklyn perch:

Yext, a 10-year-old enterprise tech business that manages “digital knowledge” — mmmkay! — started trading this morning on the New York Stock Exchange at $14 per share, up by more than 27 percent from its IPO price of $11 per share.

The company was valued at around $940 million last night, MarketWatch reports, after selling 10.5 million shares to investors for approximately $115 million. Yext originally set its expected price range between $8 and $10 per share.

Sarcasm and italics original, naturally. Yext is now worth over $1 billion on a non-diluted basis.

If you are rolling your eyes slightly at the news of yet another tech IPO, don’t. Yext is a bit different than other recent successful IPOs like Alteryx and Mulesoft: it is growing more slowly.

In fact, Yext’s 38.5 percent growth rate is around half of fellow-recent IPO Mulesoft’s own 2016 70.3 percent pace of growth. It’s also far below fellow-2017 IPO Alteryx’s 59.4 percent year-over-year growth rate. And yet the market welcomed Yext with above-range pricing and an early pop. We can read that as an indication that companies may not have to hit growth marks to find a place in public markets. And, if that is the case, it’s a good moment for a host of companies to exit. With an IPO window as open as that, what the hell is any unicorn’s excuse to not go public?

Feel free to find a recalcitrant, well-funded startup and lecture them.

Regardless, it’s a good day for Yext and its investors:

From the Crunchbase Daily

Yext prices IPO

Yext, which provides a platform for businesses to get listed in maps and search results, priced shares for its IPO at $11 each, slightly above the projected range. Shares of the New York-based company are slated to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “YEXT”.

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