CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:CRWD) rolled out its IPO today with shares selling at $34 a share but the stock’s price actually opened much higher as shares were soaring.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based cybersecurity business’ first day as a publicly traded company began with shares opening at $63.50. The original expected range of the stock was for $28 to $30 per share. However, CRWD stock is up about 81.4% following the company’s first day since going public.
CrowdStrike’s rally pushed the company’s market cap to around $12 billion, which is close to four times the business’ valuation from its last private round back in June 2018. The business is now worth about as much as Symantec, a security software provider that’s been around for 37 years, even though CrowdStrike has about 5% as much revenue.
The company is trading in the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol “CRWD.” There are plenty of big companies that have gone public in 2019 other than CrowdStrike, including Uber, Lyft, Pinterest, Zoom and more.
The impressive first day of trading for the company helped push CEO George Kurtz’s net worth to over a billion, while the early backers of the company have experienced handsome returns. One such investor is Warburg Pincus, who owns a stake that’s worth over $3 billion.
CrowdStrike offers cloud-based technology that is designed to detect and prevent breaches and the business recorded a net loss of $140 million for the latest fiscal year, while its sales more than doubled to $249.8 million.
