IPO

SolarWinds will go public this month, says WSJ

In March I noted that network management software vendor SolarWinds had filed an updated S-1 form with the SEC, a bureaucratic step towards making an initial public offering (IPO).

Today the Wall Street Journal reports that SolarWinds has set the terms of its IPO today. It will ask for a share price of $9.50 to $11.50 and it will make 12.1 million shares available to the market. SolarWinds hasn’t announced the date that it will go on the market, but the Journal article noted that companies usually time their IPOs to occur about two weeks after they set their terms.

IDC has identified SolarWinds as having the eighth highest revenue share in the network management market, just behind such industry heavies as IBM, CA, HP and EMC.

SolarWinds getting ready to go public, someday

I’ve always thought that SolarWinds was a great target for acquisition.  When I ask network administrators what they use to manage and monitor their infrastructure, one of the most common responses I get is SolarWinds’ flagship product, Orion.  There are plenty of good products on the market, but SolarWinds definitely comes up in conversations more than anyone else.

I think part of SolarWinds’ popularity can be traced to its distribution model. Rank and file IT pros can download affordable products directly from the company’s website. Many of the network managers I talk to also say Orion is just easy to use and it does what they need it to do.

While I’ve been waiting for a network equipment vendor to come along an snap up the company, SolarWinds has been making some moves of its own. It recently filed an S-1 form with the SEC, an early step towards an initial public offering (IPO) .

According to its filing, SolarWinds has experienced strong growth over the last few years - revenue of $38.2 million in 2006, $61.7 million in 2007 and $93.1 million in 2008. The company has more than 80,000 customers, including 400 of the Fortune 500 companies.

This isn’t exactly the best time to go pubilc, but based on the financials it provided to the SEC, the company is performing well. It will be interesting to see how the market treats the IPO.

UPDATE: Got an email from SolarWinds PR folks. This S-1 filing is an update of a filing the company made with the SEC last year. So I jumped that gun in saying the company is moving towards an IPO. Looks like it’s simply keeping things in place for an IPO for if and when I decides to move forward… which would probably be when this bear market ends. That could be a long time from now.