Another IPO for SaaS Industry

Given all the doom and gloom in the financial industry this year, it's good to see another SaaS based company announce an IPO. This time it's for remote access/desktop provider LogMeIn, LOGM. This is good news as it shows additional credibility for SaaS based web applications, the value they're bringing to the markets and their end customers.

Why would a company put themselves through the seemingly weak public markets? Well, for SaaS companies, it hasn't been that bad of year. Below is a stock performance screenshot of some of the more popular SaaS companies (including crm, n, rnow, omtr, ulti, tleo, ctct, sfsf, knxa, nasdaq, and 50 day moving average).

If you squint closely enough, you'll see Nasdaq up ~18% for the year, while all the SaaS companies range from ~18% all the way up to ~70%, with a current 50 day moving average skyrocketing at 140%.

Why such positive reception? Well, for most of the businesses, the overall revenues are still slightly positive and net margins have actually been holding flat if not increasing a little over the last couple quarters. It's still early in the year of course, but results to date give encouragement of continued stability and growth.

As the public offering is still a few hours away, how is LogMeIn expected to do? Here are the SEC Filings and what a few other bloggers are saying:

GigaOm, LogMeIn Prices at $16 a Share, Windfall for VC Backers
Inorganic Growth, Imaging an alternative exit for LogMeIn
New Technology Directory, LogMeIn IPO: Is it financially sound?

Out of curiosity, the LogMeIn unique visitor stats from Compete:

Visitors have about doubled over the last year (from 420k to 770k), with most of the growth in December & January.

Note: During IPO today, LogMeIn, jumped up to $21 before finally setting back to $20. Still a 25% upside over the forecasted $16!