Technology

Firsthand Technology Value Fund Confirmed as Nutanix IPO Winner

Jon C. Ogg

Published: October 1, 2016 6:05 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 2:56 am

When companies come public, it is not out of the ordinary that venture capital groups or outside investment funds are the beneficiaries of that move. Technology investors often look for public companies beneficiaries tied to beneficial initial public offerings (IPO) for this theme. An announcement made late on Friday confirmed that the Firsthand Technology Value Fund Inc. (NASDAQ: SVVC) was a holder and beneficiary of the Nutanix Inc. (NASDAQ: NTNX) IPO.

The Firsthand Technology Value Fund is a publicly traded venture capital fund that invests directly into technology and cleantech companies. The group confirmed that Nutanix has been a fund holding since May 2015.

Nutanix is a provider of so-called hyperconverged data center equipment. The company’s products are said to offer corporate customers access to technologies similar to those used by Google, Amazon and Facebook in their own data centers.

After having priced at $16.00 per share, Nutanix opened at $26.50 for its first official trade and only saw a low of $26.10 immediately after that. Nutanix shares were trading at $37.00 or so late on Friday and more than 27 million shares had traded shortly before the close.

This IPO resulted in proceeds to the company (Nutanix) itself of approximately $238 million. As far as what this means to the Firsthand Technology Value Fund, the fund holds 459,772 shares of Nutanix common stock as of September 30, 2016. More importantly, the company said that its own average cost is roughly $16.04 per share.

If Nutanix shares hold this high or gain, it can be a help. Still, it will have to hold for some time as the fund said its shares are subject to a customary 180-day lockup provision.

Kevin Landis, Firsthand’s CEO, said:

In what has been a challenging environment for tech IPOs, we are excited about the successful public debut for Nutanix. This marks the 7th IPO for our fund since its inception in 2011 and follows the successful exits of Mattson and Tapad earlier this year.

The implied cost for Firsthand would be right at $7.35 million, versus a market cap of $58 million for the fund itself with its own shares trading at $7.77 late on Friday. The Firsthand Technology Value Fund has a 52-week trading range of $6.41 to $8.72.

Other portfolio holdings of this tech fund include Hiku, Cloudera, IntraOp, Roku and more.