Report: Hortonworks Sets Terms for Hadoop-Centric IPO
Hortonworks, the company focused on Big Data crunching platform Hadoop, has been much in the news lately regarding plans for an initial public offering (IPO) for its shares. Now, according to a post by Renaissance Capital on the NASDAQ site, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has announced plans to raise $78 million by offering 6 million shares at a price range of $12 to $14. "At the midpoint of the proposed range, Hortonworks would command a fully diluted market value of $659 million," notes the post.
"Hortonworks, which was founded in 2011 and booked $42 million in sales for the 12 months ended September 30, 2014, plans to list on the NASDAQ under the symbol HDP. Hortonworks initially filed confidentially on June 27, 2014. Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets are the joint bookrunners on the deal."
During Hortonworks' short existence, Hadoop has emerged as a true open source success story, and Hortonworks' Hadoop distribution, as well as its lates traning and support options, have become very successful.
According to GigaOM, the Hortonworks IPO could be a bellwhether for Hadoop, and could benefit organizations that have invested in it:
"Teradata maintains an 8.3 percent equity share in Hortonworks. HP invested $50 million in Hortonworks in July to give it a 5.9 percent share."
And Matt Asay has written about the impact that Hortonworks' IPO could have on other Big Data players, and some concerns expressed by venture capitalists:
"Given its still shaky financials, the risk isn't merely that Hortonworks will struggle as a public company. The bigger risk is that a weak IPO will hold back other Big Data companies with better financials."
Hortonworks is young enough that these types of concerns will continue to arise, but the company is performing very well and it stands a chance of having a very successful IPO, given the buzz surrounding Hadoop and Big Data.
In enterprises as well as small businesses, the Big Data trend--sorting and sifting large data sets with new tools in pursuit of surfacing meaningful angles on stored information--is on the rise. As we've noted, the Hadoop project has been one of the big drivers of this trend, and has given rise to commercial companies that offer custom Hadoop distributions, support, training and more (with Hortonworks being a prime example).
OStatic will continue to track the plans for the Hortonworks IPO as more details become available.