PagerDuty, a cloud computing firm, had its shares jump 59% in its opening day of trading at the New York Stock Exchange, yesterday after the firm priced its first software IPO of 2019 above an elevated range.
Today is our last day as a private company. We’re ready for the first day in the next leg of our journey, our IPO tomorrow at the @NYSE. To everyone who has had worked hard to get us here, to every customer who has supported @pagerduty & every user who has trusted us- Thank you! pic.twitter.com/DjTq8O1VBh
— Jennifer Tejada (@jenntejada) April 10, 2019
Incredibly proud of my intern Claire who has kicked serious a$$ at @pagerduty. She is my inspiration, working hard to define new possibilities for @pagerduty. No such thing as an “intern project” here at $pd. People like her brought us to IPO day – thank you @UWaterloo ! pic.twitter.com/ezJ5RTMtX1
— Lilia Gutnik (@superlilia) April 11, 2019
PagerDuty had initially targeted a price of $19 to $21 for its IPO shares. However, PagerDuty’s shares traded $38.25 a piece, giving the company a market capitalization of around $2.8 billion.
Its stock was priced at $24 a piece, late Tuesday this week with a market cap of nearly $1.8 billion. PagerDuty had plans of selling 8.5 million shares in the IPO, but the stockholders offered about 570,000 shares.
PagerDuty operates an On-Call Management platform. The company helps improve the engagement between software developers and operators as it enables them to take action in real time. It is used by developers, IT, security, and customer support domains across different companies.
The company was incorporated in 2010 and has its headquarters in San Francisco, California and its competitors include Atlassian Corp, OpsGenie, and Splunk. PagerDuty’s first financing round took place in September last year, where it was valued at $1.3 billion in a private funding round led by T. Rowe Price and Wellington Management.
PagerDuty is used by over 11000 companies, extending across 350,000 employees, including Box and Slack. Its revenue hiked 48% last year, reaching $117.8 million. However, the company’s overall loss had reached $40.7 million from $38.1 million last year.
Jennifer Tejada, CEO, PagerDuty, told TechCrunch about the IPO that “it is a gratifying day, especially for the co-founders who were pulling the idea together for PagerDuty…before they even launched it, and for employees who’ve been with the company for nearly as long and…turned down safer and higher-paying jobs along the way”. Tejada owns a 5.7% stake in the company and says that PagerDuty is going to serve a $25 billion market made up of about 22 million software developers.
Public reaction to the news is positive, with people congratulating PagerDuty for the win:
.@PagerDuty’s @jenntejada just rang the bell! Five years later and I still remember paging @alxsolomon, “Congrats we’d like to fund you!” https://t.co/HZZ67IDPi4 $PD #PDNYSE pic.twitter.com/0OJakQRpE4
— Ethan Kurzweil (@ethankurz) April 11, 2019
Thrilled for @pagerduty. Not thrilled to look back at the emails where I passed on the company's seed round because the $5 million valuation was too high. Whoops. https://t.co/lAkNt0zG0W
— Chris Sacca (@sacca) April 11, 2019
PagerDuty's IPO today values it at $1.8 billion, a win for founders, employees and investors. Here's how PagerDuty overcame early doubters — and failing to stand out in its Y Combinator class. https://t.co/4xIfCZuZRp
— Alex Konrad (@alexrkonrad) April 11, 2019
Excited and happy for you!
Also happy to get to be a shareholder (especially since we've been a happy customer for years)! Congratulations to the whole team and look forward to hearing all about it next time I see you 🙂
— Stewart Butterfield (@stewart) April 11, 2019
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