AAA Cloudflare to cross over to public markets

Cloudflare to cross over to public markets

Cloudflare, a US-based cloud hosting provider that has raised more than $330m from investors including corporates Microsoft, Baidu, Alphabet and Qualcomm, filed for a $100m initial public offering yesterday.

The $100m is a placeholder figure, and the offering is set to take place on the New York Stock Exchange.

Cloudflare provides content delivery services for websites, hosting them and providing functions such as security, domain name system services and guarding against distributed denial of service attacks, ensuring that they work efficiently and rapidly.

The company increased its revenue 47% year on year to $129m in the first six months of this year while increasing its net loss slightly from $32.5m to $36.8m in the same period. It has raised $332m altogether.

Cloudflare was valued at $3.2bn as of a $150m round led by investment manager Franklin Templeton in March this year, according to Business Insider.

Investment and financial services group Fidelity Research and Management had led Cloudflare’s $110m series D in 2015, investing with internet group Baidu, software producer Microsoft, Google Capital and Qualcomm Ventures, subsidiaries of internet technology group Alphabet and mobile chipmaker Qualcomm.

New Enterprise Associates, Pelion Venture Partners, Venrock, Union Square Ventures, and Greenspring Associates also took part in the series D, as existing backers.

None of the corporates are among Cloudflare’s largest shareholders. NEA owns 8.8% of its class A shares and 23% of its class B’s, Pelion holds 9.2% of its class A’s and 20.9% of its class B’s, Venrock has 1.1% of its class A’s and 19.5% of its class B’s, and Fidelity owns 30.9% of the class A shares.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Securities, Jefferies, Wells Fargo Securities, RBC Capital Markets, JMP Securities, Evercore Group, Needham & Company, Oppenheimer, BTIG and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey are the underwriters for the IPO.

By Robert Lavine

Robert Lavine is special features editor for Global Venturing.

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