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The software company’s long-awaited IPO brings its value to nearly double what SAP paid for it two years ago.
Last July, German software giant SAP announced its plans to bring Qualtrics public. In its IPO today (28 January), Qualtrics sold 51.7m shares at $30 each, raising $1.55bn, according to Reuters.
This puts the company’s value at more than $15bn, which is nearly double what SAP paid when it acquired the software company in 2018.
It had earlier aimed to sell 50.4m shares, after raising the offering from 49.2m shares. The $30 price tag is also up from the previous price range of between $27 and $29, which was raised from an earlier range of between $22 and $26.
Proceeds from the offering will be used to repay $1.76bn of debt owed to SAP America, according to the IPO filing, while the remainder will be for working capital and other general purposes. SAP will remain the company’s controlling shareholder.
Qualtrics, which has developed an experience management system, had plans to go public in 2018. Its filing at that time included healthy Q3 results, showing an $8m revenue increase on the previous quarter. According to TechCrunch, the company had planned to sell 20.5m shares in its debut for between $18 and $21, which would have put the company’s value between $3.9bn and $4.5bn.
But when SAP acquired the company in November of that year, the IPO was put on hold. Less than two years later, going public was back on the table as SAP announced its plans to launch an IPO.
At the time of the announcement, SAP CEO Christian Klein said: “As [Qualtrics founder] Ryan Smith, [SAP president] Zig Serafin and I worked together, we decided that an IPO would provide the greatest opportunity for Qualtrics to grow the experience management category, serve its customers, explore its own acquisition strategy, and continue building the best talent.”
In its filing, Qualtrics said driving new customer sales and expanding its global presence were key elements of its growth strategy.
