The IPO Buzz: Upsized UiPath in Play

UiPath (PATH proposed), the robotic automation software company, raised eyebrows with the upsizing of its IPO early today. The buzz is that UiPath is “the deal of the week.” But the mood is cautious after the heartbreak of AppLovin (APP), which slid 18.5 percent on its April 15th debut. Bankers expect to raise about $3.6 billion from 11 IPOs on the IPO Calendar this week.

Shortly after the sun rose on Wall Street, UiPath  increased its IPO on Monday by 28 percent to 23.89 million shares at $52 to $54 – up from 21.28 million shares at $43 to $50, according to an S-1/A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (Source: S-1/A filing dated April 19, 2021). If priced at the mid-point of that new range, the IPO would give UiPath a valuation of $27.5 billion – below the $35 billion cited in its final private round in February, as TechCrunch reported.

“The valuation is crazy,” an IPO expert says.

Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, BofA Securities,  Credit Suisse,  Barclays and Wells Fargo Securities are the joint book-runners of the UiPath IPO.

The co-managers’ list reads like the credits for a Wall Street movie: SMBC Nikko, BMO Capital Markets, Mizuho Securities USA, KeyBanc Capital Markets, TD Securities, Truist Securities, Cowen, Evercore ISI, Macquarie Capital (USA), Nomura, RBC Capital Markets, Canaccord Genuity, D.A. Davidson & Co., Oppenheimer & Co., and Needham & Co.

UiPath’s IPO was priced Tuesday night at $56 – $2 above the top of its upwardly revised range – on 23.89 million shares to raise about $1.34 billion. The IPO’s pricing at $56 a share gives UiPath a valuation of about $29.07 billion. On Wednesday, UiPath (PATH) stock is set for its debut on the New York Stock Exchange. UiPath closed its first day of trading at $69.00, up 23.21 percent from its IPO price.

UiPath provides robotic process automation (RPA) software to almost 8,000 customers that represent about 63 percent of the Fortune Global 500. Adobe, Chevron, Chipotle, CVS and Uber are among its customers. The company’s software automates mundane tasks like logging into applications, extracting information from documents, moving folders, filling in forms and updating information fields and databases, the prospectus says.

Founded in 2005 in an apartment in Bucharest, Romania, UiPath grew to become a New York-based global company with 2,863 employees by the end of 2020 and a Park Avenue address.

“Bill Gates used to talk at Microsoft about a computer in every home. I want a robot for every person,” UiPath CEO Daniel Dines says on the company’s website. Dines, who is also the co-founder and the chairman of UiPath, will hold about 88.1 percent of the voting power of the company’s stock after the IPO.

For its fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2021, UiPath reported $607.6 million in revenue and a net loss of $92.4 million. The company’s revenue grew 81 percent on a year-over-year basis (up from $336.2 million for the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2020) while its net loss narrowed by 82 percent (down from a net loss of $519.9 million for the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2020), according to the prospectus. (See page 2 of the S-1/A filing dated April 19, 2021, for these details.)

As for the rest of the IPO Calendar: Three healthcare deals – biotechs Impel Neuropharma (IMPL proposed) and Rain Therapeutics (RAIN proposed) and bunion surgery device company Treace Medical Concepts (TMCI proposed) – filed IPO terms on Monday with the SEC. All three launched the same day and jumped on this week’s pricing roster to start trading on Friday.

(Check out the IPO Calendar here: IPO Calendar | IPOScoop )

April’s Last Hurrah

One deal – FTC Solar (FTCI proposed), which makes solar panel tracker systems – unveiled its IPO terms on Monday and landed on next week’s IPO Calendar. The solar energy IPO is set for a debut on April 28th. More names are likely to join the late April parade as the week goes along.

Stay tuned.

(For more information about these companies, please click the hyperlinks, which will take you to the IPO profiles on IPOScoop.com.)

(Editor’s Note: This IPO Buzz column was updated on Wednesday morning to include the pricing details on UiPath.)

 

(Never trade on proposed symbols. You might wind up owning something on the OTC Bulletin Board.)

Disclosure: Nobody on the IPOScoop.com staff has a position in any stocks mentioned above, nor do they trade or invest in IPOs. The IPOScoop.com staff does not issue advice, recommendations or opinions.

Disclaimer: A SCOOP Rating (Wall Street Consensus of Opening-day Premiums), is a general consensus taken, at press time, from Wall Street and investment professionals concerning how well an IPO might perform when it starts trading. The SCOOP Rating does not reflect the opinions of anyone associated with IPOScoop.com. The SCOOP ratings should not be taken as investment advice. The rating merely reflects the opinion of the professionals at the time of publication and is subject to last-minute changes due to market conditions, changes in a specific offering and other factors, such as changes in the proposed offering terms and the shifting of investor interest in the IPO. The information offered is taken from sources we believe to be reliable, but we cannot guarantee the accuracy.