CommVault 'Well Positioned' for IPO

CommVault Systems Inc., which began talking IPO in 2002, has become the odds-on favorite to be the next storage networking company to go public.

Yes, we've been here before. CommVault has been chatted up by industry analysts and VCs as a prime IPO candidate for months, but now speculation is gathering steam (see Window of Opportunity and SAN Snacks From SNW). "They can do something in the second or third quarter," says Jeff Hinck, general partner of Crescendo Ventures which, incidentally, isn't backing the company. "They probably could've gone already, but they were waiting for profitability to catch up with their revenue growth."

CommVault executives won't confirm or deny the growing IPO talk, perhaps because marketing VP Larry Cormier openly discussed going public in March of 2002 – big talk that amounted to diddly (see CommVault Aims for IPO).

But analysts now treat CommVault's IPO filing as a given – a matter of when, rather than if. "I expect an S-1 (Registration Statement) filing in the near term," says research analyst Brion Tanous of Merriman Curhan Ford & Co. "I would speculate their lawyers are writing it."

Meanwhile, CommVault's Cormier says the Oceansport, N.J.-based company that spun out of Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: LU) in 1996 is adding between 200 and 300 customers a quarter. Figures on Hoover's Online indicate CommVault has grown 28 percent, 30 percent, and 44 percent over the past three years and had revenues of $44.4 million in 2003.