Cloud technology company Rackspace went public for the second time on Tuesday after four years in the private market following a leveraged buyout from Apollo Global Management Inc.
During that time, the company refined its focus and went from a competitor to a tight-knit partner with large-scale cloud service providers.
"One thing that's changed pretty significantly is that prior to the take-private in 2016, Rackspace Technology was competing with AWS, Google, and Microsoft," CEO Kevin Jones told Cheddar. "Today we don't compete."
The company is now focused on designing and operating software that helps clients manage
multiple cloud computing services.
Jones said coronavirus has given the company a boost as clients seek to cut costs or pivot to new business models by embracing cloud technology.
"We had a lot of momentum before, but this has really just put us into hyper-growth mode," he said.
Yet the new model didn't spare Rackspace from a tough public debut. Shares fell 20 percent at the opening bell on Wednesday, and the offering was already priced at the bottom end of its range.
Jones, however, maintains the company is still in a stronger position than ever.
"We've seen tremendous growth in the business," Jones said. "We've achieved four record-breaking sales quarters in a row. The company has 95 percent recurring revenue, we're extremely profitable, great cash flow. With this profile, we decided to come back into the public markets."
This isn't the first time Rackspace has gone public during an economic crisis. Its first IPO was in 2008 in the heat of the Great Recession.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
