Qualtrics Raises $1.55 Billion in its IPO and Closes the Day Worth over $28 Billion

It may have taken nearly two decades to accomplish, with an $8 billion payday along the journey, but Qualtrics is finally a publicly traded company.

Clearly, Qualtrics’ Initial Public Offering last Thursday was the biggest business story to happen in Utah last week — by a long shot. (And without argument, the IPO of the Provo-headquartered eXperience Management company is the biggest story of the still new 2021 year.)

In addition, the oversubscribed interest in the spinout from Germany-based SAP drove the pre-offering per share price target from an early-on low $20-range before jumping to a settled-upon price of $30 per share … except that when shares actually began trading Thursday afternoon, they began selling at over $40/share.

As a result, over $1.55 billion was raised in the IPO. This valued Qualtrics (NASDAQ:XM) at north of $28 billion at the end of the trading day on Thursday.

After the IPO, SAP controls slightly over 79% of the newly traded company, while new investors will own just over 15%.

Interestingly, one of the largest private equity firms in the world (Silver Lake Technology Management) negotiated a private investment transaction with SAP that allowed Silver Lake to acquire 4.5% of Qualtrics for $550 million before the public offering.

Qualtrics Co-Founder and Chairman, Ryan Smith, also made a similar deal with SAP in December, purchasing 6 million shares for $20 per share.

Bottom line? Thursday was a banner day for SAP, Qualtrics, their shareholders, Silicon Slopes, and the entire state of Utah.

Kudos all the way around.

NOTE:  This article represents a portion of a story originally published by Deseret Business Watch on February 1, 2021. A few minor editorial changes have been made with this version of the story to better match the current Silicon Slopes writing style.