Workday, the HR and finance software-as-a-service provider launched by the founders of PeopleSoft, has issued its S1 filing in advance of an initial public offering (IPO) later this year.
The company has made no secret of its intention to go public, but has apparently delayed the decision until now. Back in May 2010, Workday’s chief operating officer Mike Stankey told Information Age that the company expected to go public within 18 months.
Workday expects to raise $400 million in its IPO, nearly four times what SaaS pioneer Salesforce.com raised in its IPO in 2004.
The S1 filing revealed that Workday’s revenues took £134 million in revenues in 2011, and almost as much (£119 million) in the first six months of this year. Doubling this figure to an annual run rate of around £240 million puts Workday’s current growth rate at 80% year-on-year.
Unsuprisingly for a fast-growing SaaS company, Workday is heavily loss-making. Its net loss so far this year has been $49 million, meaning that it spent 40% more than it earned in sales.
Workday’s high operating costs were the first risk factor identified in the S1. “We have a history of cumulative losses and we do not expect to be profitable for the foreseeable future,” it says. “we cannot assure you that we will achieve profitability in the future, nor that, if we do become profitable, we will sustain profitability.”
It also identifies exposure to privacy breaches and data centre outages, high competition in the SaaS space, and the possibility that current growth in cloud computing is not sustained among its other risk factors.
The S1 also acknowledges that its business would be adversely affected if present partner Salesforce.com were to launch applications for its target markets.
Workday’s UK customers include Aviva Europe and RBS Insurance Group, the company behind Direct Line.
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