San Francisco-based Anaplan, one of five companies planning to close initial public offerings this week, raised the expected price range for its shares in an SEC filing Wednesday, signaling an IPO that could be richer than it had anticipated.
Enterprise planning software company Anaplan, which is privately valued at more than $1.4 billion, had originally proposed selling 15.5 million shares of common stock at a range of $13 to $15 per share. In an amendment to its securities registration filing, the company raised the range to $15 to $17.
If the shares price at $16—the midpoint of the new range—Anaplan would reap $248 million, a 14 percent bump over its earlier projections. At the midpoint of the original price range, Anaplan would have raised $217 million. The shares would be traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the market ticker PLAN.
Anaplan sells subscriptions to Web-based software designed to help businesses make comprehensive financial and operational plans that factor in data related to their sales, marketing, IT, and financials, as well as their workforce and supply chain.
The company competes with tech giants IBM, Oracle and SAP, along with other businesses that specialize in financial planning and analysis software, such as Palo Alto, CA-based Adaptive Insights, which announced in June that it had agreed to be acquired by Pleasanton, CA-based enterprise software company Workday (NASDAQ: [[ticker:WDAY]]). Other companies in the sector include Seattle-based Kepion and Albany, NY-based Vena Solutions.
Anaplan relies on a proprietary modeling engine, Hyperblock, that allows business planners to run scenarios to foresee the consequences of alternate decisions, and enables collaboration among thousands of users, according to the firm’s SEC filing. Anaplan focuses on attracting large global enterprises as customers. Its current customers include HP, United Airlines, Box, Del Monte, DocuSign, and McAfee. At the end of July, Anaplan counted 979 customers, of which 220 were members of the Forbes Global 2000, a roster of the world’s largest publicly traded companies.
Anaplan reported $168 million in revenue for the year ended Jan. 31, 2018, when the company’s net loss was $47.5 million. It brought in revenue of $109 million for the six months ending July 31, 2018.
The San Francisco company, founded in 2006, has more than a thousand employees. Anaplan is making its public debut in a favorable climate for IPOs. More than 150 companies have filed to go public this year, research firm Renaissance Capital has reported. On Oct. 2, Mountain View, CA-based freelancers’ marketplace Upwork (NASDAQ: [[ticker:UPWK]]) raised $187 million as its shares priced at $15—exceeding the company’s expected range. San Francisco-based event ticketing platform Eventbrite is waiting in the wings. In August it announced plans to raise $200 million in an IPO.
Anaplan may reap one of the large hauls among the five IPOs expected to close this week. The others on deck are South San Francisco, CA-based cancer drug developer Allogene Therapeutics; Livent, a Philadelphia-based maker of lithium-based compounds; Bridgewater, NJ-based drug firm Osmotica Pharmaceuticals; and La Jolla, CA-based Equillium, which makes antibody-based drugs. Late Wednesday, Allogene priced its 16 million shares at $18, the top of its expected range, raising $288 million, Renaissance Capital reported. According to an early report by Reuters, Livent priced its shares at $17 on Wednesday, short of a higher range it had set.
As a private company, Anaplan raised a total of $299.9 million, according to Crunchbase. Its investors include Granite Ventures, DFJ Growth, Premji Invest, Meritech Capital Partners, Top Tier Capital Partners, and Shasta Ventures.
Image credit Depositphotos; image copyright: SergeyNivens
