UiPath, a Romanian-based workplace automation software maker, is set to become the largest business software list since the Snowflake campaign began in September.
UiPath unveiled its plans for an initial public offering on the New York stock exchange on Friday, almost two months after raising $ 750m in a $ 35bn round trip, including the new capital.
The company uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to automate routine and repetitive business processes, from extracting data from documents to filling out forms. Its technology promises to “enhance and empower knowledge workers in the financial, sales, HR and legal sectors.
“Our platform is designed to eliminate the need for employees to perform low-value manual tasks, freeing up time to focus on more meaningful, strategic work,” UiPath said in a filing S-1 Friday. “The Association is at a turning point in how organizations perform their work, and we believe that the ability to accelerate software to enrich the employee experience will provide huge value and efficiency opportunities.”
No information on UiPath’s target prices or capital increase has been released. But with the February valuation likely to provide a floor for its projected price, the IPO will provide the biggest test of investor desire for fast-growing software companies but is losing, after a rocky start to 2021 for high-tech stocks flying last year.
Shares of computer company Cloud Snowflake doubled on the first day of trading in September to become the largest ever IPO for a U.S. software company. But avalanches have fallen more than 42 percent from their December high, topping the company at $ 64bn on Friday.
Daniel Dines, chairman and chief executive of UiPath © Noam Galai / Getty
Filing on Friday showed UiPath revenue grew 81 percent to $ 607.6m in the year to January 2021, while net loss declined from $ 519.9m to $ 92.4m.
The pandemic may have “accelerated the adoption of automation” as more companies had to operate remotely, UiPath said. Its sales and marketing costs fell last year when it canceled corporate conferences and other travel. After cutting hundreds of jobs in 2019, the company also reduced management salaries for three months last year when the pandemic began.
UiPath was co-founded by former Microsoft engineer and CEO Daniel Dines in Bucharest in 2005. Its headquarters moved to New York in 2017. Dines’ letter to investors is forthcoming. describes how the company went from “10 people in an apartment in Romania in 2015” to operating in nearly 30 countries today.
Like other tech listings including UK-based Deliveroo, UiPath will retain a two-class share structure, giving Dines more than 50 percent voting power. Other major investors ahead of the IPO include venture capital firm Accel, with 29 percent of class A shares, Earlybird with 11 percent and CapitalG Alphabet with 8 percent.
UiPath competes with competitors including UK-based Blue Prism and SoftBank-backed Automation Anywhere in a corner of the business software market known as “robotic process automation”. Microsoft has also sought to expand in the field, taking ownership of RPA Softomotive in May last year.
While UiPath “bots” can cost a few thousand dollars a year in licensing costs, they are usually much cheaper than back office workers who have the normal jobs they are aiming for. reset or reset. UiPath now has nearly 8,000 customers, comprising 63 percent of the Fortune Global 500. Nominated customers range from tech companies such as Adobe, Uber and Autodesk to Toyota, Bank of America , EY and CVS Health.
Despite its focus on back office automation, UiPath’s filing revealed that its own finance department had struggled with some accounting issues. It revealed a “material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting”, dating back to 2018, resulting in an “inappropriate allocation of selling price by itself and certain errors in income. delays and contract funds ”.
He blamed the problem on “the lack of oversight and technical capacity and expertise within our finance department to identify such errors” and said that the issue had been “rectified”.