Fastly, the US-based content delivery technology provider backed by media group O’Reilly and telecommunications companies Deutsche Telekom and Swisscom, floated on Friday in a $180m initial public offering.
The offering consisted of almost 11.3 million shares priced at the top of its $14 to $16 range, valuing it at about $1.45bn.
The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the IPO’s underwriters have the option to buy nearly 1.7 million additional shares to boost its size to $207m. Its shares closed at $23.99 after their first day of trading.
Founded in 2011, Fastly is the developer of a cloud-based content delivery network with added security features such as web application firewalls and tools to combat distributed denial of service attacks.
The company increased its revenue from $105m to almost $145m in 2018 while cutting net losses slightly from $32.5m to $30.9m. It is considering using $47.5m of the IPO proceeds to meet existing debt obligations.
Fastly had received $216m in funding prior to the offering, including $1m of seed capital from O’Reilly Media’s corporate venturing subsidiary, OATV, as well as Amplify Partners and Battery Ventures in 2012. Fellow venture capital firm August Ventures invested $10m in 2013.
OATV, Amplify Partners, August Capital and Battery Ventures returned for the company’s $40m series C round in 2014, alongside Ridge Ventures (then known as IDG Ventures). All five joined Iconiq Capital for a $75m series D round the following year.
Sorenson Capital led a $50m series E round for Fastly in mid-2017 that included OATV, Iconiq Capital, Amplify Partners, August Capital, Ridge Ventures and Sapphire Ventures.
Deutsche Telekom’s corporate venturing arm, Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP), subsequently led a $40m round for Fastly in July 2018 that also featured Swisscom’s early-stage investment vehicle, Swisscom Ventures, as well as Sozo Ventures.
OATV’s 10.7% stake was diluted to 9.3% in the offering, while Fastly’s other main shareholders are August Capital (17.8% post-IPO), Iconiq Capital (11.1%) and Amplify Partners (9.2%).
BofA Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, and Credit Suisse are joint book-running managers for the IPO while William Blair, Raymond James, Baird, Oppenheimer, Stifel, Craig-Hallum Capital Group and DA Davidson are co-managers.
