According to a report by research firm CB Insights, 590 tech companies has healthy trajectories and have valuations of a minimum of $100 million, easily making them potential candidates for initial public offerings. Moreover, the report said over two dozen of them have a minimum of $1 billion in company valuation.
Tech news site Mashable noted eight companies who had expressed their intentions to go public as early as next year. Cloud storage service Box, for example, had made its plans known to get listed sometime next year. An earlier report done by Mashable said Box had been hosting mock earning calls in order to help the company transition to the life of a publicly-listed firm. Co-founder and chief financial officer of Box, Dylan Smith said in July, "We want to be acting like a public company before we go public."
Another cloud business company, DropBox, is also making preparations to ensure the business stay private until its listing in 2014. New York Times said in its report that DropBox is raising $250 million in new funding, which had boosted the company's valuation to $8 billion.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was reportedly rumored to take his mobile payments company Square next year, and was said to have been talking to banks to help him manage the offering. In an earlier Bloomberg interview, he said, "Eventually we'll get there. Right now we're building the practice within the company and building the discipline. I think Square is ahead of a lot of companies in that regard because I think we're building a financial company."
Aside from Alibaba, who has been working through the last few months of this year to get listed in the US, Candy Crush game maker King was said to have already hired several banks for its planned IPO. Gilt Groupe, famous for its online flash sales, is also said to be pursuing an IPO next year after multiple layoffs, divested one of its assets, and hired a Citigroup executive as its new chief. Another tech company in the food delivery industry rumored to be also pursuing an IPO as early as next year is Seamless.
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