UPDATED 21:22 EDT / JUNE 29 2018

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Tenable and Opera file for IPOs as Domo goes public after slashing valuation

Initial public offerings of stock by enterprise technology companies keep on coming, with business intelligence startup Domo Inc. going public today as network security firm Tenable Inc. and the browser company Opera Ltd. filed for an offering as well.

On the surface, Domo’s offering was a success, as shares jumped 30 percent over their offering price today to close at $27.30 a share. The offering raised $196 million for the company on a valuation of $511 million late Thursday night.

However, that valuation was far below the $2 billion at which the company once was valued, a reflection of its very high marketing and sales spending and less-than-stellar sales growth. Revenue in the year that ended Jan. 31 was $108.5 million, up from $74.5 million the year before, with a net loss of $176.6 million, down only slightly from the previous year’s $183 million loss. Domo also said in its filing that it had only $72 million in the bank and had exhausted its credit, warning that it needed to raise capital by August or it would be forced to “significantly reduce operating expenses.”

Moreover, Domo faces heavy competition from the likes of Tableau Software Inc., Microsoft Corp. and SAP SE. Founder Josh James got a lot of attention from investors thanks to selling another company he started, Omniture, to Adobe Systems Inc. for $1.8 billion.

As for Tenable, it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission today to go public, the latest in a string of recent IPOs by cybersecurity companies. The Columbia, Maryland-based startup said it plans to raise up to $100 million, but that’s usually a placeholder amount and likely will go higher.

Tenable reported a loss of $41.8 million on revenue of $187.7 million in 2017, but the top line was up 51 percent from the previous year, mostly thanks to growth in subscriptions.

It was valued at $550 million in 2015, when it raised a huge $250 million Series B round led by Insight Venture Partners and Accel. Tenable Chief Executive Amit Yoran, who joined the company in early 2017, previously was an executive with Symantec and RSA.

Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank Securities are the main the underwriters for the offering, with the company to go public under the ticker symbol TENB on the Nasdaq exchange.

Opera, which makers web browsers and what it calls digital content discovery platforms, also filed on Friday to raise up to $115 million in an IPO.

These are just the latest examples of business technology companies going public or planning to. Last week, Elasticsearch BV, a data search software startup that trades under the name of Elastic, was reported to have filed, with a potential valuation of $1.5 billion to $3 billion when it goes public, possibly in late summer or early fall. And on June 18, cloud survey company SurveyMonkey Inc. confirmed it filed confidentially to go public.

All the prospective public companies have some wind at their backs. Successful IPOs so far this year include Dropbox Inc., DocuSign Inc. and ZScaler Inc.

Image: geralt/Pixabay

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