IPO At Last for Cloudera

Big data firm Cloudera has filed for an IPO, aiming to raise another $200m to add to around $1 billion in private investments received in previous years.

The firm has revenue of $261m in the year ending 31st January 2017, up from $166m a year previously, but with continuing investment in R&D and a 30 percent increase in headcount to 1,470, has shaved less than ten per cent off its new loss, which still stands at $187.3m (2015-16 figures $203.1m).

Cloudera attracted a massive $740m in financing from Intel in the Spring of 2014, giving the chipmaking giant an eighteen percent share and valuing Cloudera at around $4.1bn. Since that time it has expanded internationally, including openings in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and in Budapest, but it plans further overseas openings after the IPO, with funds earmarked also for sales and marketing, research and product development.

Speculation about an IPO has been rife since 2014 but the combination of growing revenue and a mountain of unspent cash has allowed it to pick its moment carefully. Rival firm Hortonworks priced its IPO at $16 a share in 2014 and now trades at around $10.

Intel is still the company's largest shareholder, now with around 22%, and with investors Accel and affiliates (16%) and Greylock (12.5%) controls more than half the stock, which will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CLDR. Founders and leaders of Cloudera include former execs from Oracle, Yahoo!, Facebook and Google, plus the co-creator of big data core language Hadoop.

Web site: www.cloudera.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.