Up from the Depths, 30 Stories High! Gojira! Gojira!
-By Mason Lankes | [email protected]
At last, Australian company Atlassian has IPO'd, rising over 30% in its first day of trading on the public markets. People were excited a bit, bucketing towards the stock with their cash causing it to close at $27.78, up from the IPO price of $21.
Atlassian offer tools for software developers to collaborate with each other - hence the fitting ticker symbol, TEAM. The company uses a freemium type business model where it's free to start small, but as you grow larger you can pay for additional features, services, or support for your team.
Bit Bucket for example competes directly with the popular Github by offering unlimited Git repositories. Individuals can get started for free, which is great for the consumer. Atlassian's JIRA is also used frequently in many large companies for managing projects. It can track defects and issues and has all the features needed for tracking and reporting purposes.
Thus Atlassian's revenue comes only from a subset of its customers. The stock trades at an outstanding 693x earnings, valuing it at $5.74 billion company which grows quickly, but still only makes about $400 million in revenue per year. However, the company has a powerful and disruptive business model that could drive growth far into the future. Even with plenty of backers, investors are still valuing the company very richly.