A Look at How Tech IPO Class of 2014 Is Performing Now

2014 was a big year for tech initial public stock offerings. There were an astounding 273 IPOs in all—the most active period since 406 companies went public in 2000. Of those, 55 were technology companies—up 22 percent from 2013. Businesses such as Five9, Zendesk, Arista Networks, LendingClub, GrubHub, Alibaba, Hubspot and New Relic all emerged on the stock market, just before an IPO drought took hold between from late 2015 through 2016. So why was 2014 so active? This eWEEK slideshow will look at how some of the companies that went public in 2014 are performing now and the progress they’ve made (or not made) since opening day. As more tech companies go public this year (MuleSoft, Snap) and others file for IPOs (Tintri, Cloudera), are we entering another fruitful era? All revenue and stock price data is from NASDAQ.com as of June 19.

Cloud contact center software startup Five9 went public on April 4, 2014 at just $7.95 per share, but today has a stock price of $23.07 per share—an increase of 190 percent. Under CEO Mike Burkland’s leadership, 2016 revenue was $162 million, a 93 percent increase from its pre-IPO reported revenue of $84 million as of Dec. 12 2013. Of all of the companies on this list, Five9 is fifth in the ranking of stock price increase. Only Inspired Entertainment, Paycom Software, 2U and Globant are ahead of Five9.

Online food ordering service GrubHub also went public on April 4, 2014 with shares starting at $40. Its stock reached an all-time low in January 2016 at $18.85, but has since rebounded to $45.34 today. In terms of revenue, GrubHub reported $137 million pre-IPO as of Dec. 31 2013. By 2016 revenue had increased 260 percent to $493 million. In July 2016, CEO Matt Maloney said that investments in product improvement and its delivery systems led to the company’s financial success.

Customer service software company Zendesk went public on May 15, 2014 with a stock price of $11.40. Today its shares sell for $27.81—an increase of 144 percent. Zendesk has also seen improvement in revenue. Pre-IPO, Zendesk’s revenue was $72 million at the end of 2013, but increased 333 percent to $312 million in 2016. In October 2016, Zendesk released Explore and Connect, which help link its existing helpdesk and messaging applications to other systems, such as customer sales databases and marketing automation resources.

Arista Networks went public on June 5, 2014 at $55.25 per share, and its stock price has increased 183 percent to $156.66 today. Revenue growth is also impressive, as the company reported pre-IPO income of $361 million as of the end of 2013, but it reported $1.1 billion in revenue in 2016. Arista Networks released a networking platform for cloud services providers and data centers in March 2916 that unites switching and routing for greater agility and scalability.

Mobile video technology company GoPro went public on June 25, 2014 at $28.65 per share. It stock price was at an all-time high in July 2015 at $62.10, but today it is at $7.84. Reported revenue at IPO was $986 million while by the end of 2016 it was $1.18 billion. In November 2016, after just two weeks of customer sales, GoPro was forced to recall all 2,500 of its new Karma drones due to power outage issues while in use. GoPro made changes, and the drones were re-launched in early 2017.

Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group went public on Sept. 18, 2014 with its stock was priced at $92.70 per share, making it the largest IPO in history when it raised $21.8 billion. Its stock price is currently $139.47 per share. Reported revenue pre-IPO March 13 2014 was $8.4 billion. It has since has increased to $22.9 billion as of March 2017. Alibaba Cloud is one of China’s largest online retailers and web services providers, similar to Amazon and Amazon Web Services in the U.S.

Sales and marketing software company HubSpot went public on Oct. 8, 2014 with its stock priced at $32.95. It’s currently at $68.55 per share. Reported revenue at the time of IPO was $78 million at the end of 2013. But the end of end of 2016 reported revenue totaled $271 million, an increase of 249 percent. In November 2016, HubSpot was listed as a challenger in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report for CRM Lead Management. Hubspot relies on integrations with more than 40 third-party applications, including Google Calendar, Salesforce Sales Cloud and SurveyMonkey.

Peer-to-peer lending company Lending Club went public on Dec. 10, 2014 at $24.75 per share. However, its stock prices has declined to just $5.78. Revenue at the end of 2014 was $211 million, but two years later it rose to $501 million. In May 2016, CEO Renaud Laplanche resigned after an internal review found that the online lender sold $22 million of “near-prime loans to a single investor, in contravention of the investor’s express instructions.“ Today LendingClub is rebuilding by making key new hires, such as Steve Allocca from PayPal as the company’s new president.

Big data software company Hortonworks went public on Dec. 11, 2014, with stock priced at $24. It has since fallen to $13.29. Hortonworks’ most significant drop in stock price was a fall from $21.90 in December 2015 to $8.43 in February 2016. However, revenue has increased by 300 percent since then compared to income of $46 million in 2014. By the end of 2016 Hortonworks reported revenue of $184 million. CEO Rob Bearden now says the company has momentum across the food, health-care analytics, software security, mobile gaming and financial services industries, with solid customer wins.

Software performance monitoring company New Relic went public on Dec. 12, 2014 with a stock price of $30.16. Today, shares sell for $43.49, an increase of 44 percent. What’s more impressive, though, is how much revenue has grown. While revenue was only at $63 million as of March 2014, reported revenue for fiscal year 2016 was $263 million. In May 2017, New Relic announced a new Health Map to align insights on application and infrastructure performance into a single, prioritized view.