VMware IPO - A Major Success

VMware went public today!

Check out VMW on Google Finance.

Back in October of last year, I wrote an article that noted how VMware, a subsidiary of EMC, was kicking butt as a software company, but the value that they were bringing to EMC shareholders was clearly not being represented in the EMC stock price.

In February of this year, EMC and VMware announced that they would sell about 10% of the company in an IPO to happen this summer. Great minds think alike -- and ours too! I wrote about that here.

VMware pre-sold over $368M of the proposed 10% to Intel Capital and Cisco (see these articles).

For the IPO today, VMware priced at $29.00 and opened at $50.00. Near the closing bell, I took this snapshot:

Up 84.83% is what you call a successful IPO.

No wonder. IDC estimates the virtualization market at $20B by 2011. VMware is currently at $1.2B. Do the math on that. There's definitely plenty of upside for companies in the virtualization space. (Disclosure: I am a founder and shareholder of Cassatt Corporation, a company that sells virtualization management software for large data centers; I am now also a customer and shareholder of VMware).

When I wrote my original article, EMC stock was selling for about $12/share, and had been largely flat for years. Yesterday, EMC stock was selling for about $19/share. That's over a 50% rise in share price in under a year. A key kicker of that rise in share price was, indeed, the VMware IPO. Well done EMC! Your stock has finally moved and you are delivering shareholder value from your most excellent VMware asset.

Finally, Intel Capital and Cisco have more than doubled their Net Asset Value of their VMware investment in just a handful of weeks. Honestly, that was a lot faster than I had predicted. They should expect a little extra something in their holiday bonus this year.

Go VMW!

Tags: VMware, EMC, Cisco, Intel Capital, IPO, Brian Berliner, brianberliner

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