Sequoia-backed Confluent aims for $8 bln valuation in U.S. IPO
June 16 (Reuters) - Confluent Inc, a real-time event streaming platform, is looking to raise as much as $759 million in a U.S. initial public offering at the top end of an indicative range, targeting a valuation of about $8.3 billion, a filing showed on Wednesday.
The Mountain View, California-based company plans to offer 23 million shares and has set a price range of $29 to $33 per share. It has applied to list its common stock on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "CFLT".
Confluent, which in April confidentially filed to go public, said revenue jumped about 58% in 2020 and 51% to $77 million in the first three months of this year.
Companies globally began to host their annual general meetings and other conferences online last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related social distancing norms, lifting demand for live-streaming software.
Confluent, which is backed by Sequoia Capital, uses Apache Kafka, an open source event streaming platform, used by 70% of Fortune 500 companies, its filing showed.
Its offerings can be used through Confluent Cloud, an on-demand software-as-a-service (SaaS) that is available on Amazon.com Inc's AWS and Microsoft Corp's Azure platforms among others, or the Confluent's platform software.
Founded in 2014 by former LinkedIn employees, Confluent counts Expedia Group Inc, Intel Corp, Humana Inc and Citigroup Inc as some of its major customers.
Other investors include Index Ventures, Coatue Management, Altimeter Capital and Franklin Templeton. The company was valued at $4.5 billion in April 2020, according to PitchBook.
The filing comes as the U.S. IPO remains red hot. In less than six months since the beginning of the year, U.S. IPOs have already totaled $171 billion, eclipsing the 2020 record of $168 billion, according to data from Dealogic.
Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are the lead underwriters for the offering.
(Reporting by Sohini Podder in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Sriraj Kalluvila)
