Wednesday was a good day for brand-new software stocks.
JFrog FROG made a successful debut on the Nasdaq today, closing the trading session 47% higher than its initial offering price of $44 share. Shares of JFrog, a platform for software release management, closed at $64.79 and the company netted more than $500 million in its IPO.
The first-day performance “highlights the importance of our products, and the value we provide,” JFrog CFO Jacob Shulman told TheStreet. “We’re very happy with the outcome.”
JFrog focuses on a growing niche called Developer Operations, or DevOps, which aims to streamline software development and management within organizations. The company’s platform powers what it calls “continuous delivery” of software updates, helping to get new versions to the end customer more quickly and reliably.
The company says that COVID-19 has only increased the urgency of fast, reliable software updates — and demand for its platform. Shulman added that the second quarter was the company’s best ever for lead generation, and that a recent user conference attracted five times as many attendees as in years past.
“Every company is a software company today…that is evident and clear,” added JFrog CTO Yoav Landman. “You’ll be eaten by your competition if you cant release software versions fast enough.”
For the six months ending June 30, JFrog reported revenue of $69.3 million, up 50% year-over-year. It boasts roughly 5,800 customers, which include top tech companies, financial services firms, retail and healthcare organizations. Of those customers, 286 contribute over $100,000 per year, and 8 contribute over $1 million. Its net dollar retention rate was 139% as of June 30.
With the proceeds from the IPO, JFrog plans to grow “organically or inorganically, through acquisitions,” Landman added, as well as expanding more aggressively into IoT.
Alongside JFrog, Snowflake (SNOW) – Get Report, cloud storage and computing firm, also made a well-received public debut Wednesday.
Unity, a game development platform, is slated to go public on Thursday.
