IPO for Qualtrics

US-based experience management solutions firm Qualtrics is looking to raise $200m via an IPO, and aims to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol XM, after its Experience Management platform.

The business was valued at $2.5 billion when it raised $180m in a series C round last year, and has since continued its rapid revenue growth (H1 2017 $121.4m, H1 2018 $184.2m) - the shares made available will form a small part of the total and the current owners will remain in full control of the company.

In the filing documents, Qualtrics says it has created a new category of software, Experience Management, or XM, which enables clients to 'comprehensively gather and analyze a new class of data, Experience Data, or X-data, that is richer, more immediate, and more salient to understanding quality of experience than traditional operational data, or O-data...' It estimates the 'vast, rapidly growing, and underpenetrated market opportunity' that is X-data to be worth approximately $44 billion in 2018.

The company was founded as a survey software provider, in 2002, with a heavily academic focus, and says that the millions of students who used it previously are now out in the workforce helping to spread the word, 'spawning a whole new class of commercial customers and developing new use cases for our XM Platform'. Qualtrics divides XM / X-data into four key categories: Research Core; CX; Employee Experience (EX); Brand Experience and Product Experience.

For the years ended December 31st 2016 and 2017 revenue was $190.6m and $289.9m respectively, representing year over year growth of 52% ($184.2m for the 6 months ended June 30th 2018). In the same periods net income (loss) was ($12.0m) and $2.6m respectively.

SurveyMonkey, which has been seen as a competitor of Qualtrics although the respective products are now very different, has experienced a bumpy ride since going through its own IPO a month ago.

Web site: www.qualtrics.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.