July 18 - Palo Alto Networks To Go Public Friday

July 18 addendum -  Palo Alto now expects to charge $38 to $40 a share in its public debut, up from the previously stated range of $34 to $37, according to an updated regulatory filing uploaded Tuesday evening. They expect  to establish a final price for the shares Thursday night and debut in public trading Friday.  A positive way to look at this.  The offering may be way oversubscribed. A negative way. Isn't this what Facebook did? Didn't the Facebook investors  get burned?  Proceeds may be up to $250 million.  A link to the most current S-1 is below.

July 14 addendum -  Venture capital firms Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital will each hold 20.7% of the company after the IPO (Initial Public Offering), and Globespan Capital Partners will hold 7.4%.  They'll be listing as PANW.  The offering is scheduled to price on July 19, according to Bloomberg.

  They may try to raise as much as $229 million.  The initial anticipated price range, $34 to $37. This may help start up IPO activity again.   The IPO will take place on the NYSE. At the top of this pricing, they will  have a market capitalization of $2.5 billion. 

Firms leading the Palo Alto Networks IPO offering – primary lead is Morgan Stanley.  Others include Goldman Sachs, Citigroup Global Markets, Credit Suisse Securities, Barclays Capital, UBS Securities, and Raymond James. Palo Alto Networks filed their S-1 in April, reporting a loss of $12.5 million for the fiscal year ended July 31.  This is compared with a $21.1 million loss a year earlier.  Revenue had more than doubled to $118.6 million.  In a June filing, Palo Alto Networks  reported that third quarter sales for the three months ended in April rebounded to $65.7 million, for a 16% increase.  

To view the S-1, go to the link below.  The S-1 is about 160 pages of light reading. The S-1 is the amended July 17 version.
 
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1327567/000119312512304885/d318373ds1a.htm

When Palo Alto Networks filed on April 6,  the  valuation of the IPO was for $175 million.  Unlike the Facebook IPO that had Zuckerberg owning roughly a gazillion shares and a major portion of the company, Palo Alto Networks founder   and Chief Technology Officer Nir Zuk owns 6.2% of  the Palo Alto Network shares. 

Palo Alto Networks and Check Point Software Technologies are the only two companies in the Leader portion 2011 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Firewalls.

The patent infringement lawsuit file by Juniper against Palo Alto Networks late last year is still going on.

After the Facebook implosion, look for this to be  a reasonably priced IPO, with a reasonable pop.  Don’t put your money on an NYSE meltdown like the one Nasdaq had with Facebook.  Perhaps it was all the stress over Zuckerberg’s wedding that occurred shortly after the IPO.

Meanwhile, on the chest thumping front,    “Is Check Point's firewall really faster and cheaper?  Can they really see all apps on all ports?  Or even identify unknown traffic?”  Go to http://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cam/techbusters/  to view Palo Alto Networks’ video take on the situation.