Coverage: SurveyMonkey rises in first day of trading

SurveyMonkey soared more than 60 percent in its stock market debut Wednesday, after opening at $18.75 per share.

Sara Salinas of CNBC.com had the news:

The software company that offers digital survey and data analytics services for enterprise and personal use priced its shares at $12 a piece Tuesday night, above the expected range of $9 to $11. It also increased the number of shares up for sale to 15 million from 13.5 million, raising $180 million.

The stock — under the company’s formal name, SVMK Inc. — trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “SVMK.” It rose above $19 in the stock’s first few minutes of trading.

CEO Zander Lurie told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” earlier Wednesday that SurveyMonkey handles more than 20 million answers from over 3 million people every day and that the company pays “great heed” to consumer privacy.

In August when it first filed to go public, SurveyMonkey reported a $27.18 million net loss on $121.2 million in revenue for the first half of 2018. The company narrowed its losses from 2016 to 2017, according to the filing.

Jacob Sonenshine of TheStreet.com reported that the stock price jump led to a windfall for some investors:

That’s a windfall for the company’s pre-IPO shareholders, who include tennis start Serena Williams and Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer at Facebook FB. Sandberg, whose late husband had been the company’s CEO until his 2015 death, owned some 8.5% of SVMK following the IPO. Other major shareholders include venture-capital firm Tiger Global.

The company saw revenue growth from $207.3 million in 2016 to $218.8 million last year. But more importantly, SurveyMonkey’s [loss] shrunk from $76.4 million in 2016 to just $24 million in 2017.

But with $27.2 million in 2018’s first half, SurveyMonkey is on pace to lose about $54 million for the full year. What’s driving that hasn’t been revenues, which have grown marginally, but elevated operating costs. The company is on pace to spend roughly $196 million for 2018 vs. $176.9 million last year.

Fortunately, revenues could expand significantly in the near future. The company said in its S-1 filing that with 35% of revenues coming from overseas, “we see significant opportunity for growth internationally.

Ethel Jiang of Business Insider reported that the company has yet to post a profit:

In its public filing, SurveyMonkey said it generated $121.2 million of revenue for the first half of 2018, up from $106.5 million in the same period last year. It hasn’t yet turned a profit.

“Founded in 1999, SurveyMonkey changed the way people gather feedback by making it easy for anyone to create their own online surveys. ” the company said in the filing.

“Today, SurveyMonkey’s mission is to power curious individuals and organizations to measure, benchmark and act on the opinions that drive success. Our People Powered Data platform enables conversations at scale to deliver impactful customer, employee and market insights to our over 16 million active users globally.”

The lead book-running managers for the IPO include JPMorgan, Allen & Company, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Credit Suisse Securities, UBS Securities, and Wells Fargo Securities are also book-running managers.