Unity raises IPO price range after JFrog, Snowflake target steep debut valuations

On the heels of two IPOs pricing above raised ranges, Unity boosted the value of its own impending debut this morning. The well-known unicorn is currently set to begin trading this Friday, pricing after the bell Thursday.

If that happens, the gaming platform company expects to be worth between $44 and $48 per share, up from its preceding $34 to $42 per-share IPO price range that it initially set.

Unity raising its price range for its IPO is not a surprise, given that software companies have been on a strong run lately. Just last night developer-focused software concern JFrog and data-focused cloud operation Snowflake each priced their public debuts above raised price intervals.

There’s plenty of demand for growth-oriented software equities on today’s public markets. And Unity has what investors are generally looking for inside that sector: greater than 40% revenue growth, gross margins in the high-70s to low-80s, and falling losses in both percent-of-revenue and gross dollar terms.

At $48 per share, Unity would sell $1.20 billion in stock, and be valued at around $12.6 billion. Given its most recent quarter’s revenue ($184.3 million) and annualized run-rate ($737.4 million), Unity is valued at around 17.1x revenues. (You can make that multiple larger by using a trailing revenue metric instead of an annualized run-rate statistic, or lower it by using a forward revenue estimate.)

We’ll have a better feel for how hot the public markets are later today when Snowflake and JFrog start, but Unity’s upward pricing bodes well for all three firms. Unity investors are set to do well, regardless of its final price. The company last raised $125 million in mid-2019 at a valuation of around $6.0 billion. Earlier shareholders will do even better in the transaction.

Sumo Logic is also expected to debut this week. More on that IPO here, if you are so inclined.