By Krystal Hu and Sohini Podder
(Reuters) –Shares of security software provider SentinelOne Inc jumped 21.4% in their U.S. stock market debut on Wednesday, giving the company a market capitalization of nearly $11 billion.
Its shares opened at $46 and finished the day at $42.5, above their initial public offering (IPO) price of $35, indicating investors‘ interest in fast-growing software companies in a week flooded with IPOs.
SentinelOne sold 35 million shares to raise about $1.23 billion in the IPO. It had earlier planned to sell 32 million shares priced between $31 and $32 per share.
“We’re reaching a certain scale in our business, and we desire to be a trusted and transparent vendor as a public company,” SentinelOne Chief Executive Tomer Weingarten said in an interview.
Mountain View, California-based SentinelOne protects laptops and mobile phones from security breaches by using artificial intelligence technology to identify unusual behavior in enterprise networks. It competes with Crowdstrike and its customers include JetBlue, Estee Lauder, and the U.S. government.
The pandemic has boosted demand for cybersecurity software as organizations worldwide move to a remote work model.
The company plans to expand beyond endpoint protections and build more product lines, including data analytics, as well as pursue acquisitions.
Backed by Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital and billionaire investor Daniel Loeb’s Third Point, SentinelOne was last valued at $3 billion in a funding round in November.
“They started with medium enterprises, and then expanded to big companies as well as the government. Once they got interest from the public sector, it’s the biggest stamp of approval for cybersecurity,” said Yanev Suissa, founder of SineWave Ventures, an early investor.
Listed on the same day as Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Global Inc, SentinelOne went public in one of the busiest weeks of 2021 for U.S. IPOs. At least 17 companies will enter the market this week.
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were the lead underwriters for SentinelOne’s offering.
(Reporting by Krystal Hu in New York and Sohini Podder in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath, Krishna Chandra Eluri and Sonya Hepinstall)
