 Tech IPO Momentum in Down Year)
Mimecast Adds to (Slight) Tech IPO Momentum in Down Year
The tech IPO pipeline has a pulse after all.
Last week, a burst of tech companies going public, or announcing plans to do so, brought a bit of excitement in a slow year for tech IPOs. The headline grabbers were Square filing for a $ 275 million initial public offering and First Data raising $ 2.6 billion in its IPO—a big number that nevertheless fell short of expectations.
One announcement that drew less attention was Mimecast filing for a $ 100 million IPO—a number that could change—on Friday. The London-based company, which has a significant presence in Watertown, MA, sells cloud-based software to help businesses securely store and manage their e-mail accounts.
So far, only one Boston-area tech company has gone public this year: Rapid7, which raised $ 103.2 million in July. Rapid7 is also a security software company.
When we last profiled Mimecast three years ago, the company employed just under 350 people worldwide, including more than 90 in the Boston area. Mimecast now employs more than 500 people at nine offices in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and South Africa, it said in its IPO registration document.
Founded in 2003, the company raised more than $ 95 million from investors. Its biggest shareholders are Insight Venture Partners, Index Ventures, and Dawn Capital.
The company reported a $ 300,000 profit on $ 116.1 million in revenue for the most recent fiscal year, compared with a $ 16.9 million net loss on $ 88.3 million in sales during the previous year.
Mimecast is led by co-founder and CEO Peter Bauer, co-founder and chief technology officer Neil Murray, CFO Peter Campbell, and chief operating officer Ed Jennings. (The company’s chief scientist, Nathaniel Borenstein, is one of our Detroit/Ann Arbor Xconomists.) Jennings joined the company in August, after serving as chief marketing officer for Burlington, MA-based Veracode, according to LinkedIn.
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