Automotive lifecycle data startup Solera files for IPO, seeking to raise $1.5B – SiliconANGLE

Automotive data software startup Solera Corp. filed paperwork for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and and Exchange Commission on Friday, confirming an earlier report from Bloomberg that first revealed its IPO plans.

The filing is another sign of investors’ slowly growing enthusiasm for first-time share offerings, following a spate of successful public launches from tech companies such as Rubrik Inc., Raspberry Pi Holdings plc and Reddit Inc. earlier in the year.

Reuters, which first reported the news, says that the paperwork didn’t detail the price range or number of shares to be issued in Solera’s IPO. Those details are expected to be disclosed in a later filing, but unnamed sources told Reuters and Bloomberg that the company is looking to raise as much as $1.5 billion at a valuation of about $10 billion to $13 billion.

Solera is a big-data analytics company focused on the automotive industry. Its software analyzes the lifecycle data of cars and other vehicles to provide crucial insights for customers that include car dealers and insurers. Those insights help customers to address vehicle claims, repairs, and also enable predictive maintenance for fleets of vehicles, among other things. According to Solera, it boasts more than 280,000 customers globally.

The Vista Equity Partners-backed company could begin marketing its IPO to prospective investors as soon as next month, the sources said. The company originally filed confidentially for its IPO in May.

This year has been a good one for U.S. IPOs, with newly listed companies raising more than $21 billion in the first six months, according to data from Bloomberg. Notable debuts included Astera Labs Inc., a supplier of computer chips for cloud data centers, which raised $712.8 million via an IPO in March, followed by Reddit, which raised more than $500 million on the same day. The following month, the data security software firm Rubrik raised $752 million on its public debut, while in London last month, Raspberry Pi Holdings raised $228 million.

Also last month, the healthcare-focused artificial intelligence company Tempus AI Inc. raised $410 million after making its debut on the Nasdaq.

Solera is expected to be joined by other tech companies, including the AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems Inc., which filed its paperwork with the SEC last month, and the retail software firm Commercetools GmbH, which has not yet filed but has made noises about doing so.

Solera is not yet profitable. Its filing showed it posted a net loss of $486.3 million on revenue of $2.44 billion in the 12-month period ending March 31. That’s up from a net loss of $380.6 million on $2.36 billion in sales in the same period one year earlier. The widening loss and pedestrian rate of revenue growth suggests that the company still has some way to go before it will start being able to drive a profit.

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said Solera’s listing shows that the data economy is expanding to include platforms more focused on specific industry verticals. “This is the case with Solera, which has a compelling offering, providing key data insights that can help to drive revenues for its customers,” he said. “Companies like Solera may even pave the way for a new ‘data-as-a-service’ segment within the wider data industry, but its success is not yet guaranteed as its business went backwards in terms of profitability in the last year, so its managers will need to find a way to reassure investors they’re working to address this.”

Solera said in the filing it will use the money raised through the IPO to pay indebtedness and for “general corporate purposes.” Following the IPO, its main backer Vista is expected to continue to control a majority of the voting power in the company.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp. and Jefferies Financial Group Inc. are said to be leading the filing, which will see Solera listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “SLRA.”

Image: Solera