Today Asana filed their initial S1 statement. A S1 is a document companies file with the SEC in preparation for listing their shares on an exchange like the NYSE or NASDAQ. The document contains a plethora of information on the company including a general overview, up to date financials, risk factors to the business, cap table highlights and much more. The purpose of the detailed information is to help investors (both institutional and retail) make investment decisions. There’s a lot of info to digest, so in the sections below I’ll try and pull out the relevant financial information and benchmark it against current cloud businesses. As far as an expected timeline - typically companies launch their roadshow ~3 weeks after filing their initial press release (this is where we get a price range). After the roadshow launch there’s typically ~2 weeks before the stock starts trading. So we’re looking at roughly 5 weeks before any retail investor can buy the stock. Asana, however, is not going public through a traditional IPO process. They are going public through a direct listing (and the timeline is different). I’m still researching the exact timeline
Hi Jamin, thanks for this analysis and insights. Just one question: I read the whole S-1 but couldn't find out how the data to calculate the CAC payback time. How did you figure out the Net new ARR of previous year? Cheers!
Jamin - would be curious your thoughts to this. As someone newer to workflow management (I work in finance...) I tend to agree. What's the competitive advantage here other than rate of growth that stops someone else developing these features, just like they copied some of Trello's?
Thanks, this is interesting! As it relates to valuation, why did you use 30-60% growth rates for NTM revenue growth to net out TEV? Additionally, couldn't you have done a DCF for the business to figure out what the fair value of the business may be?
Hi Jamin, this is really insightful. I am not clear about the formula that you have used for Gross Margin Adjusted CAC payback. Instead of multiplying it by 12 shouldn't we divide it by 12? The formula will be (Prior Q S&M Spend)/((Current Q Net New ARR * Gross Margin)/12). Let me know if it makes sense.
Hi Jamin, thanks for this analysis and insights. Just one question: I read the whole S-1 but couldn't find out how the data to calculate the CAC payback time. How did you figure out the Net new ARR of previous year? Cheers!
Jamin - would be curious your thoughts to this. As someone newer to workflow management (I work in finance...) I tend to agree. What's the competitive advantage here other than rate of growth that stops someone else developing these features, just like they copied some of Trello's?
Thanks, this is interesting! As it relates to valuation, why did you use 30-60% growth rates for NTM revenue growth to net out TEV? Additionally, couldn't you have done a DCF for the business to figure out what the fair value of the business may be?
Hi Jamin, this is really insightful. I am not clear about the formula that you have used for Gross Margin Adjusted CAC payback. Instead of multiplying it by 12 shouldn't we divide it by 12? The formula will be (Prior Q S&M Spend)/((Current Q Net New ARR * Gross Margin)/12). Let me know if it makes sense.