3PAR is the latest storage company to file for an IPO in a week that has already seen the wild success of EMC’s VMware IPO and EqualLogic’s SEC filing.
After a two-year hiatus, private storage companies have returned to the public markets with a vengeance in the last year, with at least five going public since Riverbed ended the drought last September. CommVault, Data Domain, Isilon, Double-Take and Mellanox have also completed IPOs, and the list of companies hoping to join them is just as long.
3PAR hopes to raise $100 million in its offering, which is being underwritten by Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse, the same managers of EqualLogic’s bid. 3PAR hasn’t decided yet whether to list on the Nasdaq or NYSE.
The utility storage and thin provisioning pioneer had $23.8 million in sales in its June quarter, up from $14.75 million in the June 2006 quarter. But the company’s red ink also went up, from $2.28 million in the June 2006 quarter to $4.7 million in the most recent quarter.
For the fiscal year ended in March, 3PAR had sales of $65 million and a loss of $15.5 million, compared to sales of $37.9 million and a $16.3 million loss for the year ended March 2006.
3PAR had $31.3 million in cash as of June 30. The company reports more than 200 customers to date, among them Credit Suisse, Dow Jones, Verizon, MySpace and Priceline.com. But while the company’s growth has been strong, it is facing growing competition from vendors like HDS joining the thin provisioning craze.
EMC, meanwhile, had a lot to cheer about this week after its VMware IPO raised nearly $1 billion and the server virtualization spinoff’s shares doubled in their first two days of trading.