Add to favorites News: Better than expected share price values the company at $1.2bn.
San Francisco-based Twilio has priced its IPO above the marketed range, offering 10 million shares to the public at $15 each, exceeding the expected range of $12 to $14.
The firm plans to raise $150m from the offer, which will value the company at $1.2bn. It plans to raise 50% more funds than initially expected from the IPO.
Twilio shares are likely to list on the New York Stock Exchange on June 23, 2016 under the symbol "TWLO."
The company also plans to offer a greenshoe option to enable the underwriters to purchase up to 1.5 million additional shares from Twilio at the IPO price.
Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Securities are acting as joint book-running managers for the proposed offering.
Valuations of tech-startups have been skyrocketing over the past few years as mutual funds also participate in the early-stage funding looking to earn high returns, Financial Times reported.
This has resulted in the creation of many unicorns – which are companies having a valuation of $1bn or more.
According to Triton Research, the number of unicorns has increased sharply to 147 now compared to 14 in 2012.
Founded in 2008, Twilio currently employs over 500 people, with offices in Bogotá, Dublin, Hong Kong, London, Mountain View, Munich, New York City, Singapore and Tallinn.
In July 2015, Twilio raised $130m in a series E round of funding, led by Fidelity and T. Rowe Price, along with Altimeter Capital Management, Arrowpoint Partners, Amazon.com and Salesforce Ventures.
As of 31 March 2016, Twilio had more than 28,000 active customer accounts, according to company’s filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
It annual revenues increased to $166.9m in 2015 compared to $49.9m in 2013. The company reported a revenue of $59.3m for the first quarter of this year.
The company’s filing showed that WhatsApp is one of its top customers, occupying 17% share in its overall revenue last year.
Launching programmable voice product in 2008, Twilio has expanded its offerings to mms, voip, identity authentication, video and ip messaging.
