Continuing a run of tech IPOs, Rubrik, according to a fresh SEC filing, will be seeking as much as $713 million when the company goes public via the NYSE later this month under the ticker RBRK.
Along with Astera Labs and Reddit, Rubrik is one of the major tech firms many investors have been hoping would IPO this year, ending a two-year drought of public offerings. Additionally, Rubrik is a traditional SaaS company and will serve as a better comparison for other tech companies evaluating whether to go public in 2024, explained Phil Haslett, cofounder and chief strategy officer for EquityZen, a secondary marketplace for companies in the private market.
Because Rubrik has positive financial indicators—$784 million in revenue and 40% growth in positive cash flow—Haslett noted, if its IPO doesn’t do well it could create a chilling effect.
“If this IPO happened like four or five years ago, people would be talking about how Rubrik was a really big company from a revenue perspective and a success story,” added Haslett, who asked whether the standards for going public have changed significantly. “Because if so, then we have to kind of take a look at who’s really eligible to be a public company, or who’s going to be able to be a public company.”
According to Rubrik’s amended S-1, the company will be making available 23 million shares—out of a total of 175,433,785—priced from $28 to $31. Using a midpoint price of $29.50, the offering would generate $632.6 million, but at the higher end it would produce $713 million—and an implied valuation of more than $5.4 billion.
Such a sum would be at least $1.4 billion more than what Rubick was valued at after a 2021 funding round led by Microsoft. Rubrik was founded in 2011, with a focus on cloud-based data protection, and later entered into a partnership with Microsoft to build cybersecurity protection for its cloud service, Azure.
The top underwriter for Rubrik’s IPO is Goldman Sachs, followed by Barclays, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo, and 11 other institutions. The listing is scheduled for April 25, just a week after Ibotta, another tech firm whose IPO has garnered attention from investors, is set to make its debut on the Nasdaq.
Given how Rubrik’s shares have been moving in the secondary market, Haslett added, its pricing range seems on par with what’s been seen at EquityZen in the lead up to the IPO. Although he expects retail investors to pay less attention to the offering than to one for a household name like Reddit, Haslett still thinks intereston the institutional side could push shares skyward once trading begins.
“If everybody’s hitting the buy button, then things are going to go up at a higher velocity, like Reddit, but the opposite can also be true,” he added. “The retail awareness helps for the first six months. I think it matters less over time.”
