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Almost a year after it initially planned to go public, the coding platform has raised its pricing range ahead of its upcoming IPO.
Last week, coding platform GitLab announced its plans to go public, having delayed its initial plans for an IPO in November 2020.
Now, the company has raised its price range from between $55 and $60 per share to between $66 and $69 per share ahead of its IPO date, which is expected later this week.
The top end of the new range would see the IPO raise more than $717m, with the company targeting a valuation of nearly $10bn.
The seven-year-old San Francisco-headquartered company has grown massively in recent years. It closed $268m in Series E funding in September 2019, bringing its valuation to $2.75bn.
It was at this time that the company announced its original planned date to go public, which was 18 November 2020. The pandemic caused the company to scrap that timeline, but it said an IPO was still very much on the roadmap.
At the beginning of this year, GitLab oversaw an employee share sale that valued the company at $6bn.
The company counts code hosting service GitHub among its rivals. GitHub was founded more than a decade ago and was acquired by Microsoft in 2018 in a $7.5bn deal.
Remote working policy
As well as its status as a coding platform, GitLab is renowned for its remote-first working policy, which has been a key pillar of the company long before this was a pandemic-driven requirement for others.
The company is often pointed to as an example of how to effectively bring in remote working as a policy and its head of remote, Darren Murph, has frequently spoken and written about the future of remote and hybrid working.
However, while its remote-first approach could be seen as a forward-thinking advantage, the company has also considered this as a potential risk factor in its S-1 filing to go public.
“As a remote-only company, we face a number of unique operational risks. For example, technologies in our team members’ homes may not be robust enough and could cause the networks, information systems, applications and other tools available to team members and service providers to be limited, unreliable or unsecure,” it said.
“In addition, in a remote-only company, it may be difficult for us to develop and preserve our corporate culture and our team members may have decreased opportunities to collaborate in meaningful ways. Any impediments to preserving our corporate culture and foster collaboration could harm our future success, including our ability to retain and recruit personnel, innovate and operate effectively, and execute on our business strategy.”
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