Benchmark-backed Confluent valued at over $11 bln as shares jump in debut (updated)

Benchmark Electronics

24/06/2021 17:39

(Adds details on offering, background)
    June 24 (Reuters) - Shares of Confluent Inc  CFLT.O  jumped
more than 22% in their U.S. stock market debut on Thursday,
giving the event streaming platform a market capitalization of
over $11 billion. 
    Shares of the Mountain View, California-based company opened
at $44, compared with their initial public offering (IPO) price
of $36 per share. It had previously indicated a price range of
$29 to $33 per share for the IPO. 
    Confluent sold 23 million shares in its IPO on Wednesday,
raising about $828 million. 
    The IPO valued the company at $9 billion, doubling its
valuation from April last year, according to PitchBook. 
    Confluent, which had confidentially filed paperwork for an
IPO in April, was founded in 2014 by former LinkedIn employees
and uses an open source event-streaming platform, Apache Kafka, 
used by 70% of the Fortune 500 companies.
    San Francisco-based venture capital firm Benchmark is
Confluent's largest shareholder, a regulatory filing showed. 
    The company's other investors include Sequoia Capital and
Index Ventures. 
    Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs were the lead
underwriters for the offering. 
    


 (Reporting by Sohini Podder in Bengaluru;
Editing by Vinay Dwivedi)
 ((sohini.podder@thomsonreuters.com;))