*By Carlo Versano*
Shares of SurveyMonkey's parent company SVMK ($SVMK) jumped more than 50 percent in their market debut Wednesday.
The stock opened at $18.75, well above the IPO price of $12, which was already higher than the target range.
It's just the latest sign of strong investor demand for new tech offerings ー SVMK also sold a greater-than-expected 15 million shares in the IPO.
The 20-year old online polling company, part of the original dot-com rush, hopes to ride the wave of strong tech IPOs from the likes of Eventbrite ($EB), Farfetch ($FTCH), and Sonos ($SONO).
"It seems like investors really can't get enough of these IPOs," said the Wall Street Journal's Maureen Farrell.
Farrell has been following the SurveyMonkey road show and told Cheddar Wednesday "there was a ton of excitement," highlighted by a $40 million capital raise from Salesforce Ventures, which also invested in Dropbox ($DBX) in that company's March IPO.
That was "another stamp of approval from the industry," Farrell said.
SurveyMonkey was a pioneer of the "Freemium" model. The company said it had 16 million active users as of June, with 600,000 paying for the premium service. The company is not yet profitable, though ー like with many new tech companies ー that fact has not slowed interest.
The company is also a natural acquisition target, according to Farrell. Cloud computing companies like Oracle ($ORCL) and Salesforce ($CRM) would be obvious suitors, with the latter already showing its interest.
Among SurveyMonkey's largest shareholders is Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who inherited a 10 percent stake when her husband, former SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg, passed away unexpectedly in 2015. Sandberg has said she will donate the entirety of her shares to The Sheryl Sandberg & Dave Goldberg Family Foundation.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
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.
