Kayak finally followed through on its long-awaited IPO plans Friday, raising $ 91 million on its first day Friday on the Nasdaq. The online travel company’s stock, which was priced at $ 26 a share, jumped by 27 percent, finishing the day at $ 33.18 a share.
Kayak went public alongside Palo Alto Networks, which finished the day at $ 53.13 a share, up 26.5 percent from its opening price of $ 42. The security software maker raised $ 260.4 million after selling 6.2 million shares. The two new listings provided a nice boost to the tech industry, which has seen most of its IPOs go south this year including the problematic roll out of Facebook .
Kayak’s run-up was especially drawn out. The company first filed to go public back in November of 2010, but delayed its IPO a few times after the market conditions looked dim.
“We will continue to strive to innovate and improve our technology in order to provide travelers with comprehensive, accurate and intuitive travel tools that they can access from whatever device they choose,” the company said Friday.
Kayak, which enjoyed a 32 percent revenue increase during its last fiscal year to $ 224.5 million and posted income of $ 9.7 million, still faces risks associated with its dependence on online travel agencies and travel suppliers. But it’s playing in a big market for travel, which generated $ 284 billion in revenue last year.
Palo Alto Networks offers customers a next-generation firewall that allows them to control applications and content. In the nine months ending on April 30, the company generated $ 179.5 million in revenue and $ 5.3 million in net income.
Combined with the recent successful debut of ServiceNow last month, the IPO market is looking up again for tech companies. It suggests that investors may be losing some of their wariness about tech stocks though we’ll have to see if it holds up over time. And IPOs are still behind where we were last year at this time.
Image courtesy of Flickr users Teeppix
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