Lehi, Utah-based Weave Communications priced its stock at $24/share yesterday, sold 5 million shares of stock on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE:WEAV), and raised $120 million in the process in its Initial Public Offering (net of any transaction fees).
As reported recently by Silicon Slopes in "Weave Jumps in the IPO Pool," yesterday's IPO comes just three-and-a-half weeks after the company announced its intent to go public (which is actually pretty fast for an IPO).
By the time I was able to chat yesterday with Weave's CEO, Roy Banks, it was already 1pm Eastern time, past the middle of the trading day on Wall Street.
Unfortunately, the Street did not have a good day yesterday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average finishing down by over 150 points for the day.
Not a huge selloff, mind you, but enough to make it a not pretty day for an IPO, with Weave's share's finishing down over $5/share from their offering price. Ouch!
Nevertheless, as I suspected while reporting on Weave's IPO originally 3.5-weeks ago, and as was reaffirmed in my chat with CEO Banks yesterday, Weave is in a good place. And it's in really good hands with Banks at the helm.
{By The Way: Banks is a very seasoned and successful technology industry veteran, someone who also has significant financial experience in growing and selling firms, and raising money for companies. And with a five-year stint in the U.S. Navy to start off his career (Petty Officer, 2nd Class, Ret.), I would not bet against Banks (or Weave, for that matter). Just saying.}
Naturally, given that Weave is still in the midst of its Quiet Period having just gone public yesterday, there wasn't a lot of details that Banks could, or should, share with me during our Zoom meeting.
But an IPO does a couple of things for a firm, not the least of which is raising money by selling shares to the public.
And once a firm is "public," going back to the well to raise more money is always an option. {Witness the efforts this year of such other Utah-based firms as HealthEquity and Qualtrics with their, respective, follow-on Public Offerings.}
So ... what to expect from Weave in the months ahead? Four things:
- It will continue to expand within its existing vertical markets (Dentistry being its largest and strongest vertical today);
- It will expand into new vertical markets;
- It will grow its service and product offerings; and
- It will look seriously at possible acquisitions.
Should be an interesting 2022 for Weave.
