On October 14, 2021, GitLab started its initial public offering on Nasdaq. After the first day of trading, its shares jumped 35%, closing at $103.89. Thus, with a total of 143,534,821 shares, GitLab’s capitalization reached $14.9 billion.
According to the NASDAQ platform, as of October 14, the highest price per share was $106.70, and the lowest — $93.11. At the beginning of trading, the company’s shares cost $77. And before the IPO, the company expected the price per share to be around $66-$69.
The trading started on October 14 at 7:00 pm Kyiv time. An hour later, prices per share had risen to $94-$95. During the IPO, the company sold 8.42 million shares and raised about $801 million, Reuters reports. According to CNBC, the company’s capitalization equals 64 of its annual revenues.
The company now employs about 1,350 people in 65 countries around the world. According to many media and AIN.UA’s sources, GitLab gave ESOs to its employees. So, some of them also became quite wealthy people after the IPO.
According to CNBC, before the IPO, the shareholder breakdown was as follows:
- Sid Sijbrandij — 19%
- Khosla Ventures — 14%
- ICONIQ — 12%
- August Capital — 11%
- GV (formerly Google Ventures) — under 7%
- Dmytro Zaporozhets — about 5%
According to these figures, Zaporozhets is not yet a billionaire but owns a stake worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Back in 2019, GitLab representatives said they planned to go public in 2020. However, the pandemic disrupted their plans, and the offering was postponed for more than a year.
The founder of the startup is Dmytro Zaporozhets from Kharkiv. He joined GitLab in 2011, having a full-time job. Zaporozhets decided to create an alternative to GitHub, which could be installed on his server because the analogs were too expensive. In 2013, a second funder, Dutch entrepreneur Sid Sijbrandij, joined the startup. From that moment, they started working on GitLab full-time.
