Pure Storage Aims for $450 Million in IPO Next Week

Pure Storage, the company devoted to selling enterprise storage gear based entirely on flash memory, will price its IPO next Tuesday and will open for trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

According to an updated filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Pure will issue 25 million shares at a price range of $16 to $18, valuing the offering as high as $450 million. That’s a lot higher than the $300 million it said it expected to raise when it first filed to go public in August. The offering values Pure in the range of about $3 billion.

Pure closed the first half of its 2015 fiscal year on July 31 with revenue of nearly $159 million, up 171 percent from the prior year’s period. It posted a net loss for the period of nearly $113 million, up 18 percent from the prior year. Combined operating expenses rose from $126.5 million to north of $205 million, led by sales and marketing costs, which rose by 51 percent.

Pure has raised more than $470 million from investors including T. Rowe Price and the private equity firm Tiger Global in its most recent funding rounds. The biggest shareholder is Sutter Hill Ventures, which led Pure’s $5 million A round back in 2009 and owns about 28 percent of the company. Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri, a longtime partner at VC firm Greylock Partners, also sits on the Pure board. Greylock led Pure’s $20 million B round and has a stake in Pure amounting to about 17 percent of the company. Redpoint Ventures has about nine million shares and Index Ventures has about four million shares.

As a flash memory storage company, Pure’s offering will be closely watched — and perhaps avoided — by some who have been burned by offerings in the space before. The last two companies aiming to bring flash memory to corporate data centers haven’t done so well.

Fusion-io went public in 2011 in a $2 billion offering, but soon faltered and was snapped up by SanDisk for $1.2 billion last year.

Violin Memory debuted on the NYSE in September of 2013 at $9 a share, but opened for trading at $7.50. It was an indicator of trouble to come. The company fired its CEO, Don Basile, three months later after the company reported a quarterly loss that was twice the size that the Street expected. It was considered among the worst IPOs of 2013. On Wednesday, its shares closed at $1.38 a share.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

We're here to shed some clarity

One of our core beliefs here at Vox is that everyone needs and deserves access to the information that helps them understand the world, regardless of whether they can pay for a subscription. With the 2024 election on the horizon, more people are turning to us for clear and balanced explanations of the issues and policies at stake. We’re so grateful that we’re on track to hit 85,000 contributions to the Vox Contributions program before the end of the year, which in turn helps us keep this work free. We need to add 2,500 contributions this month to hit that goal. Will you make a contribution today to help us hit this goal and support our policy coverage? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via