Apptio rises 41% in cloud IPO

Seattle-based Apptio went public on the Nasdaq today, seeing its shares rise nearly 41 percent on its first day of trading.

The cloud software company, which targets CIOs, went public during a slow year for tech IPOs. Only a handful have braved the market following the dismal performance of last year’s tech stocks.

But the few that went public this year have mostly done very well. Twilio has seen its shares rise more than 300 percent since its June debut and The Trade Desk saw its shares rise more than 60 percent on its first day of trading this week.

Apptio CEO Sunny Gupta told us they were confident they were ready for this step. “We have been preparing for this moment for a long time,” he said. The enterprise company has 325 business customers and this will “allow us to get off to the next 1,000 customers.”

Gupta believes that “IT budgets are rising” and that for whatever reason it was the “last major function in the enterprise” to transition to the cloud.

Apptio has raised over $136 million, dating back to 2007. Five percent stockholders include Greylock Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Shasta Ventures.

Ravi Mohan from Shasta Ventures said that he believes Gupta “and his team at Apptio have helped transform the way that enterprises approach IT spending,” calling him an “exceptional founder.”

But Apptio is not yet profitable. In the six months ending in June of this year, the company lost $14.9 million. That decreased from $18.4 million in the same period the year before. Revenue grew from $47.2 million to $61.7 million in the same time frame.

All eyes will be on Nutanix’s offering next week, which has been an anticipated IPO for nearly a year. The IPO window is expected to remain open for the next month, but should get quiet closer to the election.