Business software maker Atlassian may file for an IPO as soon as next week in the U.S. markets, according to a source-based report by Bloomberg. The company, valued at $3.3 billion after its last round of funding, has been in talks with Goldman Sachs Group Inc (N:GS). and Morgan Stanley (N:MS) to work on the offering, the report said.
Australia-based Atlassian, set up in 2002 by co-CEOs Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar using credit card debt, has been slow to take up venture capital money. In the past eight years, the company has raised just two rounds of funding using secondary shares from investors, including Accel Partners and T. Rowe Price, relying mostly on its profits to fund its growth -- a rare approach among software firms.
Between its fast-growing user base and revenue -- the company’s revenue jumped 48 percent last year -- Atlassian has enjoyed the status of being the "flagship of the Australian tech industry." The impending IPO would dwarf Australian accounting software group MYOB's $2 billion offering on the Australian Securities Exchange in May.
Atlassian reportedly filed its prospectus in September under a U.S. provision called Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, which permits companies with less than $1 billion in annual revenue to file their IPO paperwork confidentially.
Atlassian makes software for developers and scientists for tasks such as tracking and testing code and communicating among teams.
The move comes even as technology IPOs have slowed this year in the U.S. In 2015, 42 tech companies have raised about $7 billion so far, compared to 74 deals for all of 2014, which raised $34.3 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
However, Atlassian's plan to list in U.S. markets was seen as a major blow to Australia’s hopes of garnering a strong funding climate for startups as many startup chiefs had counted on the company to boost the local markets.
"The best thing Atlassian could have done for the local sector would have been to list in Australia," Freelancer founder Matt Barrie told the Sydney Morning Herald. "They would have been the best thing on the bourse," he added.