Ruckus Wireless, thought for some time to be on the shortlist of networking companies headed for an initial public offering (IPO), has hired Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in preparation for going public sometime this year, according to published reports.
Bloomberg this week reported Ruckus' alleged plans sourcing a person with "knowledge of the matter," who told the news site that a Ruckus IPO will "probably occur this year." Ruckus CEO Selina Lo told Bloomberg that the company is indeed in talks with bankers about a possible IPO.
Reached by CRN, David Callisch, vice president, corporate marketing, declined to comment on the banker rumors but said Ruckus is "exploring all opportunities."
"It's an exciting time to be in the carrier Wi-Fi space," Callisch said. "And we seem to be growing by leaps and bounds."
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Ruckus' expanding carrier Wi-Fi footprint -- it controls about 27 percent of service provider Wi-Fi mesh node shipments, according to the Dell'Oro Group -- has been key to its growth. Also instrumental to its growth has been an early embrace of enterprise-focused solution provider partners that took Ruckus' ZoneFlex products into small and midsize businesses, and have also pushed the company upmarket into larger enterprise WLAN territory dominated by vendors like Cisco and Aruba Networks.
Last fall, Ruckus won out in the SMB Networking Hardware category of CRN's 2011 Annual Report Card, besting longtime category staples like Cisco, HP and Adtran.
Ruckus was founded in 2004 and did about $120 million in revenue in 2011, according to the company. In February 2012, Ruckus took in $21.7 million in financing -- bringing its total VC investment to $72.7 million over the past eight years -- and was pegged by researcher Gartner as having the highest year-over-year revenue growth among wireless LAN suppliers in the fourth quarter of 2011.
The technology sector is once again a focus for IPOs, thanks largely to Facebook and other large social media companies like LinkedIn and Zynga. Several other networking and security companies, such as Avaya and Palo Alto Networks, have also filed Forms S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in preparation for IPOs. Others, such as Infoblox, which surged 42 percent during its April 20 debut, began trading as public companies this spring.
The last WLAN-focused company to go public was Ruckus rival Meru Networks in March 2010.
