SurveyMonkey has filed for an IPO, joining a list of technology companies that have gone or are planning to go public in 2018.
The online survey company plans to trade on NASDAQ under the stock ticker “SVMK.” Since debuting in 1999, SurveyMonkey said in its corporate filings that of its 60 million registered users, about 16 million have actively used the company’s services over the past year.
SurveyMonkey is currently unprofitable, though like many other companies that have recently gone public, including Dropbox (DBX), DocuSign (DOCUSIGN), and Smartsheet, it is increasing its sales.
The company recorded $218.8 million in sales for its fiscal 2017, which was a 5.5% bump from the $207.3 million it logged the previous year. While the company lost $24 million in 2017, it was a 68% decrease from the $76.4 million it lost in 2016. That said, for the past six months ending on June 30, 2018, SurveyMonkey lost $27.1 million, which means that it’s losses have increased this year.
Some of the company’s competitors include Google, Qualtrics, Medallia, and other unspecified “full service market research firms.”
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Zander Lurie, SurveyMonkey’s CEO, penned a letter in the corporate filing that explains how difficult it was for the company when previous CEO Dave Goldberg suddenly passed away in an accident that shook the tech industry.
Lurie writes:
Dave died tragically and suddenly on May 1, 2015. Anyone who knew Dave will understand how devastating it was for the company—for all of Silicon Valley, actually—to lose such a visionary. Organizations that suffer that sort of shock can either unravel or rally. We rallied. I believe the company is more empathetic, more resilient and more determined because of Dave’s life and death.
“Our IPO represents a significant opportunity to highlight our brand and introduce our full product portfolio to a broader audience,” Lurie continued. “We are confident we have the team, the strategy, and the operational rigor to deliver for public stockholders.”
According to the filing, SurveyMonkey has 600,000 paying users. However, the company said, “The actual number of unique users may be lower than we report as one person could count as multiple registered users, active users or paying users.”
The company says its inability to determine the number of unique users is a limitation in the data that makes it more challenging to manage its business. “A majority of our registered users may never convert to a paying user, and if we are unable to convert free users to paying users, our business, results of operations and financial condition could suffer,” the filing says.
SurveyMonkey conducted layoffs in 2016 in order to “focus on our core products, increase operating efficiency and reduce costs over the long-term,” according to the filing. That said, the company is planning to now grow through a big international expansion outside of the U.S. That it says will be a “critical element of our business strategy.”
