After a disappointing year, the IPO market for tech companies has got off to a strong start in 2017. Alteryx (AYX) recently became the second enterprise software company to go public this year after Mulesoft.
Alteryx’s Journey
Irvine, Californa-based Alteryx, Inc. was founded in 2010 by CEO Dean Stoecker, CCO Olivia Duane Adams, and CTO Ned Harding. They had originally registered the company as SRC LLC in 1997 with a vision to build tools that would allow customers to engage in strategic applications and conduct tactical execution against those strategies. They started out as system integrators offering cloud-based analytics applications. It was in January 2006 that they rolled out the first version of the Alteryx product. It grew out of the need to create one single tool with many capabilities that could manage various technologies with fewer resources.
Photo Credit: Gary J. Wood/Flickr.com
Alteryx is a leading provider of self-service data analytics software. Its software platform enables organizations to dramatically improve business outcomes and the productivity of their business analysts. Its subscription-based platform allows organizations to easily prepare, blend, and analyze data from disparate sources and come up with data-driven decisions. This is done through visual workflows and an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that can eliminate the need to write code and reduce tedious, time-consuming tasks to a few mouse-clicks. It aims to make the platform as ubiquitous in the workplace as spreadsheets.
Alteryx has more than 2,300 customers in more than 50 countries, including over 300 of the Global 2000 companies. Its customers include Ford Motor Company, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., Knight Transportation Inc., Nike, Inc., Southwest Airlines Co., Tableau Software, Inc., and Tesco PLC. Its platform is also leveraged by leading management consulting organizations such as Accenture PLC, Bain & Company, and the Boston Consulting Group Inc. It has over 400 employees across the United States, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
Alteryx was bootstrapped initially with a little help from family funds. In 2011, they raised $6 million in funding from SAP Ventures because they felt they needed guidance, support, and assistance navigating the bigger ecosystem. Since then, it has raised $163 million from investors including Insight Venture Partners, Iconiq Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, Sapphire Ventures, and Toba Capital. It raised $85 million in its latest round in October 2015 at a valuation approaching $1 billion.
Alteryx’s Financials
Alteryx derives its revenue primarily from the sale of software subscriptions. For the years ended December 31, 2014, 2015, and 2016, its revenue was $38 million, $53.8 million, and $85.8 million, respectively, representing y-o-y growth of 42% and 59%, respectively. Its losses for 2014, 2015, and 2016 were $20.3 million, $21.5 million, and $24.3 million, respectively.
Sales and marketing expenses accounted for 65% of revenue in 2014 and 80% in 2015. Research and development expenses have been constant at 21% of revenue in 2014 and 2015. As of December 31, 2016, it had $52.7 million of cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments in marketable securities.
According to IDC, the worldwide market for business analytics software represented approximately $41 billion in 2015 and is expected to grow to approximately $61 billion in 2020. Within the broader business analytics software market, Alteryx addresses the business intelligence and analytic tools, analytic data integration and spatial information analysis markets that accounted for $18 billion in 2015 and are expected to grow to approximately $27 billion in 2020.
On March 24, Alteryx went public on the NYSE under the symbol AYX. It had priced its IPO of 9 million shares of its Class A common stock at $14 per share, at the top end of its range of $12 to $14 per share, which values it at $783 million at the mid point.
Its shares closed 10% higher at $15.50 a share on its opening day after rising as high as $15.72. Its stock is currently trading at $15.03 with a market cap of around $847 million. It raised $126 million from the offering and plans to use the proceeds for growth and complementary acquisitions.
Comments
Log in or sign up to join the conversation.