SolarWinds IPO Debuts With Strength (SWI)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 10, 5:31PM EDT · Published May 20, 7:31AM EDT

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SolarWinds, Inc. (NYSE: SWI) is set to debut in an initial public offering this Wednesday morning. We got a premium pricing at $12.50 for 12.11 million shares, which is higher than the $9.50 to $11.50 indicated price range. Despite the name, this is not a green technology or solar power company.

About 9 million shares are from the company and some 3.11 million are form selling holders. JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley are the lead underwriters on the offering; and co-managers are listed as Jefferies & Co., Thomas Weisel Partners, and Ladenburg Thalmann. The underwriting group has an overallotment option to sell some 1.81 million shares.

As a reminder, this is not a solar power company. The company makes enterprise-class network management software ranging from individual software tools to more comprehensive software products, solve problems faced every day by network professionals and help to enable efficient and effective network management.

For the years ended December 31, 2006, 2007 and 2008 and the three months ended March 31, 2009, it generated:

Revenue of $38.2 million, $61.7 million, $93.1 million and $24.1 million, respectively;
Operating income of $25.4 million, $30.9 million, $42.0 million and $10.0 million, respectively;
Adjusted EBITDA of $27.1 million, $35.4 million, $48.4 million and $12.1 million, respectively.

JON C. OGG

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.