Another company is zooming onto Wall Street, signaling that the window for initial public offerings is opening up even amid a fragile period for the global economy.
ZoomInfo Technologies, a Vancouver, Wash.-based software company that uses machine learning to help more than 15,000 customers drive sales and marketing programs, raised $887 million as the 13-year-old company sold shares at $21 per share. The 1,287-person company — led by co-founder and CEO Henry Schuck and originally known as DiscoverOrg — is starting trading today on Nasdaq under the ticker ZI.
Update: ZoomInfo stock spiked 62% on its first day of trading, finishing Thursday at $34/share, valuing the company at more than $13 billion.
The Oregonian pegged the valuation on the company at the time of the public offering at more than $8 billion, meaning it is the second most valuable public company in the Portland area after Nike. It’s the first Portland-area company to go public since nLight two years ago.
ZoomInfo posted revenue of $293.3 million last year, and adjusted operating income of $167.1 million. It’s adjusted operating margin last year stood at 51%, down from 57% in 2018. It showed a net loss of $78 million last year, and posted an accumulated deficit of $213.8 million as of December 31, 2019.
Axios noted that ZoomInfo could get an unexpected boost from traders who confuse it with video conferencing service Zoom Communications, ticker ZM, which has seen its stock more than triple this year.
You can watch the virtual ringing of the opening bell on Nasdaq by ZoomInfo here. (24-minute mark).
“Not giving up is embedded in our DNA,” said Schuck as he opened trading of Nasdaq and explained how the company and its customers are adapting to the unique challenges presented by COVID-19. In fact, the 36-year-old Schuck said that the company was able to analyze its marketing data to determine which industry sectors were poised to do well amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even so, the company wrote in its IPO filing that as a result of the pandemic it “will experience slowed growth or decline in new customer demand for our platform and lower demand from our existing customers for upgrades within our platform.” The Oregonian notes that the company laid off 100 employees earlier this year.
ZoomInfo faces competition from Microsoft-owned LinkedIn and its Sales Navigator product, as well as from traditional data intelligence companies such as D&B Hoovers and TechTarget.
