Palo Alto Networks Slides on Secondary Offering

Internet security firm Palo Alto Networks Inc. (NYSE: PANW) this morning priced a secondary offering of 4.8 million shares at $63 a share, about 4% below last night’s closing price of $65.50. The company will not receive any proceeds from the offering because the shares on offer are all being sold by existing stockholders.

Palo Alto Networks held its initial public offering on July 20, going out at $42 a share, well above the expected range of $34 to $37 a share. The share price peaked at more than $72 in early September.

Early investors and management were subject to a six-month lockup period during which they couldn’t sell their shares on the open market, but the company’s joint book-runners, Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) agreed on Monday to release the lock-up restriction early for some shares.

None of the firm’s largest stockholders is selling shares. The largest fraction of the shares on offer is 1.5 million being offered by Globespan Capital Partners. Tenaya Capital is selling 566,000 shares and Nir Zuk, the company’s CTO, is selling 200,000 shares.

Shares of Palo Alto Networks are down about 4.4% this morning at $62.60 in a 52-week range of $51.10 to $72.61.

Paul Ausick