Tuesday, January 26, 2016
IPO Slowdown? Not For This Market: Santa Barbara
Amid hand wringing about an IPO slowdown in 2015, there's one shining region which had a banner IPO and acquisition year last year: Santa Barbara. The city and surrounding region, which has been a long time technology hub, had a huge IPO and exit year, according to an analysis conducted by socaltech. There were five exits north of $100.0M along the Central Coast, including three IPOs. The biggest exit was the $1.5 billion acquisition of lynda.com by LinkedIn last April, and three companies--MindBody, Appfolio, and CytomX Therapeutics (founded out of UCSB)--all had their IPO on the NASDAQ in 2015. In addition, Santa Barbara's AnsibleWorks was among the latest in enterprise IT software companies in the region to see an exit, and was sold to Red Hat in August for somewhere north of $100M.
The bright spot in Santa Barbara reflected a fairly active year for Southern California as a whole, which saw the biggest biotech IPO ever at LA's Nankwest--one of billionaire Patrick Soon Shiong's companies--raising $2.6 billion for that company, an acquisition at Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. in Malibu for $350M, as well as an IPO of Match Group, the parent firm of Tinder.
Photo courtesy Phil Hilfiker via Flikr CC.