Qlik confidentially registers for IPO – planning to go public again

On January 6th we got the news that our partner Qlik® is preparing for becoming a publicly traded company once again. It has announced that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) for a proposed initial public offering (IPO) of its common stock.

By this, the first steps for a return to public markets have been taken roughly six years after it was acquired by the private equity group Thoma Bravo. When Qlik was founded in 1993, it was one of three companies in the wave of business intelligence companies focusing on self-service BI and data visualization.

Qlik’s original offering was the Windows-based BI solution QlikView. Last decade, the more modern, web based Qlik Sense was released. There’s been a lot of consolidation in the BI space and Qlik’s initial competitors Spotfire and Tableau were acquired. QlikTech International was once a public company with its shares traded on the Nasdaq exchange from 2012 until the Thoma Bravo buyout in 2016. From there, Qlik has expanded its business through acquisitions including Podium Data, Attunity, and Big Squid, resulting in products including Qlik Data Integration, Qlik Replicate, Qlik Compose, and Qlik AutoML.

With these and more acquisitions, Qlik has moved past pure BI into the stack of data warehouse automation, data management, and AI as well. This trend of more holistic data and analytics solutions has been driven by the cloud and digital transformation. Qlik’s move to go public comes at a time when demand for cloud-based analytics and intelligence enterprise software solutions has seen a major uptick as global businesses move to a fully remote or hybrid working model due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of shares to be offered, the timeline, and the price range for Qlik’s proposed IPO have not yet been determined. Qlik says they “expect to complete the public offering following the SEC review process, subject to market and other conditions”. Companies confidentially file for an IPO with regulators to keep their financials hidden from competitors until the regulator reviews the paperwork.

About Qlik

Qlik was founded in Lund, Sweden as QlikTech in 1993, and is now based in Philadelphia in the US. Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. Qlik provides an end-to-end, real-time data integration and analytics cloud platform to close the gaps between data, insights, and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik does business in more than 100 countries and serves over 50,000 customers around the world. Learn more at qlik.com.

Further information

Read Qlik’s press release here:
Qlik Announces Confidential Submission of Draft Registration Statement Related to Proposed Public Offering