Nutanix slam dunks IPO

Hyper-converged tech upstart Nutanix debuted on the Nasdaq on Friday as NTNX – as expected – opening the day at $26 and closing at $37. That's up 131.25 per cent on its initial offer of $16.

The biz, based in San Jose, California, had priced its stock at $11 to $13, but upped that last night just ahead of its initial public offering, which has been about 10 months in the making. The leap to nearly 40 bucks apiece could make it the best performing IPO of 2016 – it is the largest in the year to date. The company offered 14.8 million class-A shares to net at least $224m in investment.

Nutanix was valued at about $2.2bn and now has a $5bn market cap. In the 12 months to July 31, 2016, it booked total revenues of $445m, up from 2015's $241m and 2014's $113m, and made a net loss of $168m, deeper than the previous year's $126m loss, and 2014's $84m net loss.

The upstart, which just bought PernixData and Calm.io, sells software that merges compute power and storage capacity into virtual pools of resources on which virtual machines are run. ®