Snowflake Inc IPO: What Investors Need To Know

Snowflake Inc SNOW is one of many stocks set to IPO this week.

The Snowflake IPO: After an initial price range of $75 to $85, Snowflake is now seeking to sell 28 million shares at a price point of $100 to $110. The company will have 277,290,066 shares out after the offering. At the mid-price point, Snowflake will be valued at $29 billion.

Shares are expected to debut on the NYSE with the symbol SNOW on Sept. 16.

Both Salesforce.com Inc CRM and Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) have pledged to invest $250 million in the company at the IPO price. Berkshire Hathaway will also acquire an additional 4.04 million shares at the IPO price from an existing shareholder. Berkshire Hathaway founder and CEO Warren Buffett has been vocal about not investing in IPOs, which made their deal interesting.

About Snowflake: Snowflake is “mobilizing the world’s data” by “reimagining data volume for the cloud.” The company believes legacy database architectures have constraints on scalability and capacity.

“Our platform solves the decades-old problem of data silos and data governance. Delivered as a service, our platform requires near-zero maintenance, enabling customers to focus on deriving value from their data rather than managing infrastructure,” the filing reads.

Snowflake has 3,117 customers as of July 31. Fifty-six of those customers represent $1 million or more in annual revenue. These figures represent huge growth from 1,547 customers and 22 $1 million customers back in July 2019.

Snowflake also reports it counts seven of the Fortune 10 and 146 of the Fortune 500 members amongst its customers. Fortune 500 customers represented 26% of six-month revenue for the current fiscal year.

Market Size: Snowflake believes the cloud data platform market it competes in has an addressable market of $81 billion. Research from IDC calls for the combined analytics data management and business intelligence and analytics tools markets to hit $56 billion by the end of 2020 and $84 billion by the end of 2023.

Growth Plan: Snowflake plans to continue its rapid growth and will use the IPO proceeds accordingly. The growth strategies for the company listed in the IPO filing are:

• Innovate and advance our platform
• Drive growth by acquiring new customers
• Drive increased usage within our existing customer base
• Expand our global footprint
• Expand data sharing across our global ecosystem
• Grow and invest in our partner network

Financials: Second quarter revenue of $133 million grew 121% year over year. Snowflake reported six-month revenue of $242 million in fiscal 2021. The company saw fiscal 2020 revenue of $264.7 million.

Revenue has grown steadily for Snowflake with quarterly totals of $44 million, $60 million, $73 million, and $88 million for the four quarters in fiscal year 2020, respectively.

Snowflake reported a net loss of $348.5 million in fiscal 2020. The company’s six-month loss for the current fiscal year improved from $177.2 million to $171.3 million.