Presidio is expected to file for a potential initial public offering (IPO) as soon as this week, according to the Wall Street Journal. The IPO would potentially value Presidio in the $3 billion neighborhood, including debt, the report suggested. If true, the filing could help SMB channel partners to further understand how midmarket IT service providers grow and scale their businesses.
Updated noon ET, Nov. 22, 2016: This is now confirmed. Presidio has filed an IPO prospectus with the SEC. Here are 10 things to know about the filing plus a link to the Presidio prospectus.
Presidio works with a range of IT vendors -- particularly Cisco Systems, Dell EMC and VMware. Instead of competing head-on against Amazon Web Services, Presidio has developed a lifecycle management model that guides customers from consulting to projects to IT as a service. The company, led by CEO Bob Cagnazzi, has also leveraged acquisitions to gain certain intellectual property for application development and cloud services. The company has also made acquisitions to round out its regional and technology footprint.
If Presidio files a prospectus with the SEC this week, there's still no guarantee that the multi-billion-dollar IT services and consulting firm will actually go public. Like most pending IPOs, I suspect the move would depend on multiple variables -- including the health of financial markets, IT spendings and the overall appetite for IPOs in 2017.
Presidio Market Focus
Presidio's core focus involves midmarket customers, with some concentration in the government market. So government IT spending trends in 2017 could also impact Presidio's IPO decision, ChannelE2E believes. Still, Presidio has previously indicated that the company isn't overly dependent on any single customer or market segment. That revenue diversity could serve the company well amid President-elect Donald Trump's move into the Oval Office, and the associated IT priorities that potentially emerge.
Rumors about a potential Presidio IPO aren't new. Chatter about a potential Presidio IPO first surfaced around July 2016. We'll update this story if Presidio actually files a prospectus with the SEC.
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