Online learning company Pluralsight spikes in debut on Nasdaq
Online learning company Pluralsight spikes in debut on
Nasdaq
·
Pluralsight raised $310 million in its initial public offering.
·
The company priced shares above the high end of its range on
Wednesday.
By Jordan Novet
| @jordannovet
May 17, 2018
Shares of online learning company Pluralsight began trading on the
Nasdaq at an opening price of $20 per share Thursday, roughly 34 percent above
the $15 price at which Pluralsight priced shares in its initial public
offering.
The arrival of
Pluralsight on public markets suggests that public investors are still eager to
invest in smaller technology companies.
Pluralsight first filed to go public on
April 16. On May 7, the company said it
estimated it would price shares between $10 and $12 each. And on May 15
Pluralsight upped the range to
$12-14 per share. Finally, on May 16, the company announced the $15 pricing,
coming in above the high end of the most recent range.
At that price,
Pluralsight raised $310.5 million at an implied valuation of around $1.97
billion. Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan acted as the lead
book-running managers in the deal.
While anyone can pay
to take Pluralsight's courses online, the company focuses on education for many
employees inside companies. In its filing to go public Pluralsight said
competitors include Alphabet's
YouTube, Cornerstone OnDemand and Microsoft's LinkedIn Learning.
Pluralsight offers
more than 6,700 courses. At the end of the first quarter the company had 14,830
business customers, and at the end of last year it had more than 695,000 end
users. In the first quarter 82 percent of Pluralsight's billings came from
business customers.
"Technology is
moving faster today than these companies can learn it so that creates a big
skills gap around the world," CEO Aaron Skonnard told CNBC's "Squawk
on the Street" ahead of the opening trade. "We make it possible for
them to learn these skills quickly, keep up with that pace of change and thrive
in the digital age."
The company maintains
an "army of expert authors" around the world to keep courses up to
date and relevant, Skonnard said.
"That's what
makes our value proposition unique," he said. "No one else can move
as quickly as us to provide that skilled training into the enterprise."
The company's losses
and revenue widened in the first quarter, with a $23.16 million loss on $49.64
million in revenue, compared with a $9.81 million loss on $37.24 million in
revenue in the first quarter of 2017. Around two-thirds of the company's
revenue comes from within the U.S.
Pluralsight was
founded in 2004 — Skonnard is one of its four founders — and is based in
Farmington, Utah. The company had 890 employees on March 31. Investors include
Insight Venture Partners, Iconiq Capital and former U.S. Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan.
Pluralsight is part
of a collection of tech companies that have gone public in the past few months.
Others include DocuSign, Dropbox, Smartsheet and Zuora.
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