Anaplan Shares Defy Mixed Post-IPO Analyst Coverage

Anaplan Inc. (NYSE: PLAN) was among the slew of companies that came public via initial public offering (IPO) during the October market sell-off. This might have been an unlucky timing for other companies, but it also may have created an opportunity for longer-term investors to get a good company on the cheap. Now the quiet period for analysts who work for the underwriting syndicate firms has been lifted, and some of the analysts see pretty solid upside ahead. All in all, it’s a mixed group of analyst calls, and the shares were still rising.

The company claims to be a pioneer in connected planning, and after an in-full exercise of the overallotment options, it sold 17,825,000 shares of its common stock at an IPO price of $17 per share. Despite the pressure in October, Anaplan rose handily on its IPO date. And that was after a $15 to $17 per share range had been set.

Anaplan had a rather large underwriting syndicate. Not all of the analysts have projected big upside from the pricing, but some have. The lead underwriters issued the following targets and ratings:

• Goldman Sachs started it as Neutral with a $25 price target.
• Morgan Stanley started it as Equal Weight with a $23 target.
• Barclays started it as Overweight with a $30 price target.

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The co-managers and other syndicate member analysts issued the following ratings and targets for Anaplan:

• KeyBanc Capital Markets issued a Sector Weight rating.
• Canaccord Genuity has a Buy rating and $27 target price.
• Evercore ISI started it as In-Line with a $26 target price.
• JMP Securities issued a Market Perform rating and $29 target.
• Needham has a Buy rating and $30 price target.
• Piper Jaffray issued an Overweight rating and $28 target price.
• The SunTrust Robinson Humphrey Buy rating comes with a $28 target.

Anaplan shares closed at $23.92 on Monday ahead of its quiet period expiring, and its shares were up 1.1% at $24.19 in mid-afternoon trading on Tuesday. It has a post-IPO low of $20.37 to $26.97.

The company’s prospectus defined the “Connected Planning” and the opportunity as follows:

We believe Connected Planning is the next essential cloud category. It fundamentally transforms planning by connecting all of the people, data, and plans needed to accelerate business value and enable real-time planning and decision-making in rapidly changing business environments. Connected Planning accelerates business value by transforming the way organizations make decisions and placing the power of planning in the hands of every individual at every level within and between organizations.

Connected Planning represents a fundamental shift from the legacy approach to planning, which is typically confined to the finance department and uses a patchwork of outdated and disconnected tools and manual processes that are often overly complex, slow, inefficient, and static. Connected Planning enables dynamic, collaborative, and intelligent planning across all areas of an organization, including finance, sales, and supply chain, and other corporate functions such as marketing, human resources, and operations.

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