SolarWinds Plans $500M IPO Three Years After Exiting Public Market

SolarWinds, one of the leading vendors of comprehensive IT management solutions, plans to reenter the public market just three years after being purchased by two private equity giants, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Friday.

The Austin, Texas-based software vendor, owned by private equity firms Thoma Bravo and Silver Lake, is looking to relist on the New York Stock Exchange with an offer that will have a ceiling of $500 million.

A registration statement filed with the SEC did not disclose what stake the two private equity giants would maintain after an IPO or an expected listing price for its stock.

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Thoma Bravo teamed with Silver Lake in October 2015 to buy SolarWinds for $4.5 billion.

At the time, SolarWinds said being a private company would provide more operating flexibility, making it easier to execute a long-term strategy. The deal came after a disappointing quarter marked by challenges in its licensing business.

The company, founded in 1999, went public the first time in 2009 with an infrastructure management solution then geared toward small businesses, educational institutions and governments.

The solution became more capable in the following years as SolarWinds developed capabilities for managing complex hybrid deployments; including servers, networks and applications spanning public and private clouds.

The technology portfolio has dramatically expanded in the last year thanks to two important acquisitions.

Near the beginning of 2018, SolarWinds executed its first major deal since privatization, upping its cloud monitoring capabilities by purchasing Loggly, a log monitoring and analytics specialist.

Two months ago, SolarWinds bought real-time threat monitoring and management provider Trusted Metrics to boost its cybersecurity offerings.

SolarWinds closed its last fiscal quarter on June 30 with revenue for the trailing six months amounting to $398.6 million, according to the filing.

In a disclaimer in the SEC filing, SolarWinds noted "that continued growth in our business is dependent upon identifying, developing and maintaining strategic relationships with our existing and potential channel partners that can drive substantial revenue and provide additional valued-added services to our customers."

SolarWinds noted its route to the small and midsize business market was partially through managed services providers who use its products to offer IT outsourcing services.

The company also focuses on selling directly to businesses through network and systems engineers, database administrators, storage administrators, and DevOps professionals.

"These technology professionals have become empowered to influence the selection, and often the purchase, of products needed to rapidly solve the problems they confront," reads the SEC document.

The company, as of June 30, had 2,540 employees, of which 979 were employed in the U.S. and the remaining outside the country.