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Cloud Expo: Article

Workday Barrels Out of the Gate

Workday, which has yet to turn a profit, fetched an initial valuation in the neighborhood of $4.5 billion
By Maureen O'Gara
Article Rating:
October 13, 2012 08:30 AM EDT
Reads:
 2,601

Workday tickled its IPO price again Thursday night finally settling on $28 a share.

Its original range was $21 to $24, which was jacked up to $24 to $26 Tuesday.

Then it barreled out of the gate shortly before 10 Friday morning opening at $48.05, almost 72% higher than its IPO price.

The cloud reprise of PeopleSoft, started in 2005 by the same people who ran PeopleSoft before they were run off the range by a hostile Oracle takeover, got its validation making around $637 million on 22.75 million shares, pulling off the biggest largest cloud IPO - heck, the biggest tech IPO - since the Facebook fiasco in May.

All the money went to the company. None of its backers sold shares.

Workday, which has yet to turn a profit, fetched an initial valuation in the neighborhood of $4.5 billion, a tribute to its growth curve.

Profits were taken on the stock after it hit $49.23 but its price around noon was hugging $47 after grazing $45.

Its ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange - noticeably not the Nasdaq where Facebook debuted to system meltdown - is WDAY.

Workday currently claims about 340 customers including Flextronics, Kimberly-Clark and Lenovo. The HR market, largely still serviced by legacy-style software, is estimated to be worth $15 billion.

Published October 13, 2012 – Reads 2,601
Copyright © 2012 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Maureen O'Gara

Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025. Twitter: @MaureenOGara

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