SurveyMonkey parent SVMK files for IPO

Zander Lurie, CEO of
SurveyMonkey, which filed for an initial public offering on
Wednesday.
Getty / Drew
Angerer

• SVMK, the parent company of SurveyMonkey, filed
  Wednesday for an initial public offering.
• The company is seeking to raise as much as $100
  million, but hasn’t yet said how many shares it will
  sell.
• The online polling company stands apart from other
  recent tech firms that recently went public, because it’s much
  older and is posting only modest revenue growth.

SVMK, the parent company of SurveyMonkey, the online polling
company, filed for an initial public offering on Wednesday.

SVMK seeks to raise as much as $100 million in the stock sale,
which will be led by JP Morgan. The company didn’t say in the
document how many shares it plans to sell, and it hasn’t yet set
a price for them.

“We believe SurveyMonkey is a category-defining global brand,”
SVMK said in the registration statement it filed with the
Securities and Exchange Commission. “Our products are inherently
viral.”

This year has already seen an
uptick in tech IPOs, thanks to investors hungry for stakes in
young, fast-growing companies. But that dynamic could play
against SVMK’s offering.

Founded in 1999, it’s no newcomer. And its revenue grew just 5.5%
last year while it posted a sizable loss. Its sales have picked
up this year, though. It’s also worth noting that the company has
raised $1.1 billion across 5 funding events, according to
Crunchbase — at least $300 million of which came in the form of
debt. 

Here are some of the key numbers in its filing:

• Revenue (annual): $218.8 million last
  year, up 5.5% from 2016.
• Revenue (half-year): $121.2 million in the
  first half of this year, up 13.8% from the same period in 2017.
• Net loss (annual): $24 million in 2017,
  compared with $76.4 million the year before.
• Net loss (half-year): $27.2 million in the
  first half of this year, up from $19.1 million in the first
  half of last year.
• Cash flow from operations (annual): $45
  million in 2017, up from $35.8 million the year before.
• Cash flow from operations (half-year): $22
  million in the first of this year, up from $14.8 million in the
  same period a year earlier.
• Cash and cash equivalents: $43.4 million as of
  June 30.
• Total debt: $317.3 million as of June 30.