As a lackluster initial public offering (IPO) market wraps up a rather quiet first quarter, there may be some light at the end of the tunnel ahead as one tech company to reportedly gearing up to debut later this year.
Boston-based Klaviyo is planning to go public sometime in 2023, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The market automation company has hired Goldman Sachs
Klaviyo offers email and SMS marketing tools that help business-to-consumer brands manage consumer data to achieve better profitability. Founded in 2012 by Chief Executive Officer Andrew Bialecki and Chief Product Officer Ed Hallen, the company has grown its client-base to over 100,000 companies. Last May, Klaviyo added Amanda Whalen, former chief financial officer at Walmart International
The company has also raised and makes a lot of cash, securing more than $775 million in funding and generating over $575 million in recurring revenue, according to WSJ sources. Klaviyo as a whole was valued at $9.5 billion in its most recent funding round in May 2021.
If this IPO goes as planned, it is expected to be one of the biggest IPOs of 2023 and will hopefully bring some life to a weak market that has been hampered down by the Federal Reserve's rate hiking campaign and Wall Street's recent volatility streak.
In the first quarter of 2023, only 29 IPOs listed raising a combined $2.3 billion. Of that group, only eight companies raised $100 million or more. While this outpaces 1Q22, it is still underwhelming when compared to the IPO boom of 2021, which saw nearly 400 companies raised a combined total of $142.4 billion, according to data from Renaissance Capital.
The tech sector has also come under pressure recently, with large-scale layoffs from titans like Google
Still, the broader tech industry has somewhat rebounded from its recent sell-off, with the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund
