By
Temitope Olatunji
April 16th, 2024
Cloudflare, provider of a cloud platform for website security and optimization, increased the proposed range for its IPO. They plan to raise $455 million by offering 35 million shares at a price range of $12 to $14.
Californian digital content delivery and Internet security company Cloudflare announced they have raised their IPO price range from a previous $10 to $12 interlude to $12 to $14 per share.
This company seems to believe in themselves because it’s quite unusual for a unicorn like this to adjust the number of shares it expects to sell in its public debut. However, it seems that at the new prices they have set up, Cloudflare could be valued between $3.5 billion and $4.1 billion.
Let’s just remind you that the company’s value reaches a maximum of $4.18 billion when you include shares that have been reserved for underwriters in the whole estimation. All the prices are pretty much higher than Cloudflare’s final private valuation of $3.25 billion that was set in March of this year in its Series E.
Be it as it may, the market is now expecting the company to be priced up in the next two days. Cloudflare’s maximum IPO raise is now $563.5 million, estimated using $14 per share and counting shares reserved for underwriters in the calculation.
However, some analysts expect that, among the new prices, there will be a significant raise as well. When the company set an IPO price range at the very first beginning, analysts claimed that “wager $1” could be offered meaning the exact wager they see another SEC filing form the company with a “new price range.”
That kind of decision is explained by the fact that the company’s IPO price felt light in comparison to its private valuation. Let’s not forget that the company revealed very fast revenue growth and falling cash consumption. Investors, of course, desire both of these, especially at a company that is operating at scale (in surplus of nine-figures of annual revenue).
Be it as it may, the story gets even more tangled. The real question is: Where will Cloudflare finally price? In spite of the fact that, for example, companies as WeWork are persuaded to delay their IPO, everybody wonders if there is a dash that has been more upside in the tank for the popular CDN seller. To be more accurate, the question is regarding the fact that Cloudflare may decide to price its equity at a price over the top of its new range. And to be true, that wouldn’t be unusual at its $15 per share.
Just for reminder, this kind of things happened already twice this year. The luxury consignment company RealReal priced above its range in June and software company Dynatrace priced above its range in August. Both of the cases show that for companies that have traditional economics, there is always present some kind of a public-market appetite for IPO shares. Perhaps Cloudflare will go the same way.
Cloudflare was founded back in 2009 and has, since then, booked more than $235 million in revenue for the 12 months that ended June 30, 2019. It plans to be listed on the NYSE under the symbol NET. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Jefferies, Wells Fargo Securities, and RBC Capital Markets are the joint book-runners that are leading the whole deal. It is expected to price during the week of September 9, 2019.
Cloudflare Sold Its Services to Terrorists?
In the other news, the company quietly updated its S-1 filing to go public to disclose that it may have broken the law in ways including selling its services to terrorists, to narcotics traffickers, and to governments being sanctioned by the US. However, they might have violated laws governing exporting encryption technology. They said:
“We identified that our products were used by, or for the benefit of, certain individuals and entities included in OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (the SDN List), including entities identified in OFAC’s counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics trafficking sanctions programs, or affiliated with governments currently subject to comprehensive U.S. sanctions. A small number of these parties made payments to us in connection with their use of our platform.”