Shares of Nimble Storage Inc (NMBL) soared on its market debut in the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, and closed at $33.93 per share, 61.57 percent above the IPO price of $21 per share.
However, for the company, which offers hybrid, flash-optimized storage solutions (by combining flash storage with traditional hard disks), the IPO was not a walk in the park, as Nimble CEO Suresh Vasudevan had to convince investors a lot regarding the company's long-term growth plans and various prospects for generating earnings in near future.
"This was not a 'trust us, we're different' kind of discussion," Vasudevan, who rang the closing bell at the NYSE, said. "It was very factual." Nimble has a diverse client base comprising of education institutions, banks, law firms, data center operators, and more, and competes with bigger companies such as EMC Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co. Dell Inc., and NetApp Inc. The San Jose-based company was named 2013 Emerging Technology vendor by UBM Tech Channel's CRN Magazine
Nimble's revenue doubled to $33.4 million in the third quarter. It also added 1,830 more customers since early 2012, now totaling 2,100. However, it lost $30 million on revenue of $84 million for the nine months period that ended on Oct. 31, compared to $17.6 million it lost on revenue of $33.6 million during the same period a year before.
The company said it can reduce support costs as it monitors its hardware through cloud, notifying clients abou problems in 90 percent of the cases.
The IPO money will be used primarily to boost research and sales to meet the ever growing demand of enterprises for managing the storage.
At the end of the opening day, the stake of Nimble's prime venture backers Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital, each of which held 18.4 percent stake post-IPO, were valued $439 million each.
Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC acted as lead joint bookrunners for the offering. Pacific Crest Securities LLC, William Blair & Company L.L.C., Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated, Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. and Needham & Company, LLC acted as co-managers for the offering.
