Violin Memory, the flash storage provider that has hinted at an IPO for several years, is finally ready for the Street. The company today filed for a public offering of up to $172.5 million in common stock.
These funds will go toward working capital, general corporate purposes, and the repayment of debt.
The filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) reveals that Violin Memory netted nearly $74 million in revenue in the fiscal year ended Jan. 31. For the first six months of 2013 ended July 31, the company reported its loss increased from a year earlier to $59.2 million due to increased operating expenses. However, revenue for the period jumped almost 70 percent to $51.3 million.
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In the filing, the company admits that the majority of its revenue growth has occurred since the first quarter of our fiscal 2012, and its current management team under chief executive Don Basile has only been working together for a “relatively short period of time.” These two factors make its future prospects difficult to evaluate.
The company will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol VMEM.
Violin Memory was founded in 2005 to improve the performance of memory on computers. Since then, the company has raised approximately $270 million in capital from a host of venture firms, including GE Capital and SAP Ventures.
Since 2012, Violin Memory has expanded its personnel, and brought on new talent through aggressive hiring and acquisitions. It increased its headcount 77 percent, and its employee count from 252 to 445.
Last year, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that Violin Memory was valued at a sky-high $2 billion. At that time, the company was thought to have confidentially filed for a secret public offering under the JOBS Act.
