Storage area network (SAN) vendor Compellent Technologies is the latest storage firm to seek its fortune in the public markets.
Compellent filed its S-1 securities registration statement with the SEC today, the first step on the road to becoming a publicly traded company.
The company is the latest to file for an initial public offering (IPO) since Riverbed cracked the public markets last fall, ending a two-year drought for storage companies on Wall Street. Since then, CommVault, Double-Take, Isilon, Mellanox and Data Domain have successfully completed IPOs.
Compellent hopes to raise $60 million in the IPO, which will be led by Morgan Stanley. The company will trade on the Nasdaq stock market under the symbol “CPLT.”
The company’s message of ease of use and cost effectiveness has so far enabled it to compete against the biggest names in the storage market, winning more than 550 customers to date.
Compellent more than doubled sales to $23.3 million last year, and with first quarter sales of $8.9 million, is on pace to post strong growth again this year. But like a number of recent IPOs in the sector, Compellent isn’t yet profitable. It lost $13.2 million last year and another $2.1 million in the first quarter, and has an accumulated deficit of $43.7 million. The firm had $13.7 million on hand at the end of the first quarter.
The filing follows Data Domain’s wildly successful IPO last week. Data Domain, which plays in the red-hot market for data de-duplication, raised $110 million and saw its shares pop 66 percent in their first day of trading.
Yet Data Domain, which trades under the symbol “DDUP” for de-dupe, isn’t profitable either despite torrid growth. The company grew sales nearly 500 percent last year to $46 million, and another 150 percent in the first quarter to $20 million, yet lost $1.5 million in the first quarter on top of a $4 million loss last year.
Data Domain boasts more than 750 customers to date.
