Shares of Pure Storage didn’t perform as well as expected in their first day of trading after the data storage company’s initial public offering.
The company’s shares closed at $16.01 on Wednesday, roughly $1 below their $17 share IPO price set on Tuesday. Although Pure Storage had a $3.1 billion valuation as a private company, it’s now valued at a little under $3 billion with the 5.8% drop in its share price.
Analysts were closely watching Pure Storage’s debut in the public markets because of the company’s status as a so-called unicorn startup, meaning it had a valuation as a private company of $1 billion or more. File storage company Box (BOX) was the last venture capital-backed technology unicorn to go public back in January.
Pure Storage said in a September regulatory filing that it expected to price its IPO from $16 to $18 a share.
CEO Scott Dietzen remained optimistic in light of the underwhelming IPO, telling The New York Times “The markets are going to do what the markets are going to do.”
The last major storage vendor to go public was Violin Memory (VMEM) back in 2013. Violin Memory’s share price tanked on its first day of trading, with shares closing at $7.02 each after the company set its IPO at $9 per share.
Similar to Pure Storage, Violin Memory specializes in a type of technology called flash storage, which is faster than traditional spinning disc drives.
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