The marketing automation business held the first significant IPO for a U.S. venture-backed software startup since late 2021, and on Wednesday, Klaviyo shares soared 23% to $36.75 in their New York Stock Exchange debut.
Klaviyo priced 19.2 million shares late on Tuesday at $30 each, giving the business a fully diluted value of slightly over $9 billion. 11.5 million of those shares were sold by the corporation, adding $345 million in cash to the balance sheet. In a private fundraising transaction in 2021, Klaviyo was valued at $9.5 billion.
The company is listed under the ticker code “KVYO,” and it does so just one day after grocery delivery service Instacart debuted on the Nasdaq and saw its shares close up 12% after initially rising by 40%. Instacart and Klaviyo are attempting to revive the IT IPO market, which has been mostly dormant for the past 21 months. The U.K.-based Arm, a chip creator, went public last week, but it is owned by Japan’s SoftBank.
HashiCorp and Samsara, which both had their public debuts in December 2021, when the Nasdaq was just about to reach its peak and investors were paying a premium for growth stocks, were the last venture-backed software businesses to make initial public offerings in the United States. 2022 saw a rise in interest rates and a spike in inflation, which caused investors to shun risk and since the financial crisis of 2008, the worst year for tech equities.
Source (CNBC)
