附近上门

increased its initial public offering range to $27 to $29 per share Monday, positioning the company to be the largest IPO to come from Utah.

Subscribe to the 附近上门 Daily

At that heightened price range, the company could be valued at up to $15 billion and raise about $1.5 billion through its IPO. Qualtrics, which provides software to help gauge employee, product, and customer experience and competes with companies like SurveyMonkey, previously set an IPO range of between $20 and $24 before raising it to between $22 and $26.

Qualtrics will be one of 67 public companies based in Utah, according to 附近上门 data. If it prices at the top of its range, it would raise nearly twice the amount of Utah鈥檚 current largest IPO, 鈥� November 2007 initial public offering, which raised about $690 million.

Utah鈥檚 burgeoning startup and tech scene isn鈥檛 entirely new. The Provo-Lehi-Salt Lake City area is known as Silicon Slopes, and has created a tech community of its own. Venture-backed companies based in the state raised $1.2 billion in funding last year, per preliminary 附近上门 data.

But Qualtrics鈥� IPO is a big deal for the state, as was its previous exit when it was acquired by . It could also lead to a flywheel effect for more big exits coming out of the state, according to , director of Utah-based 听

鈥淨ualtrics has this cluster of incredibly talented people who were not here before it, but now are rooted in the Utah market,鈥� said Kaiser, a Utah transplant who moved to the state for business. He helped take Lehi, Utah-based public in 2014 and ended up staying.

Now, when Qualtrics alums want to start the next cohort of great companies or the next generation of entrepreneurs is looking for leaders to help build their startups, they鈥檒l be able to tap a pool of talent created by companies like Qualtrics and .

鈥淚t has now incubated the local market with exceptional talent that now knows how to work in a hypergrowth environment that lacks structure initially,鈥� Kaiser said.

Qualtrics was on the verge of an IPO in November 2018 when enterprise software maker SAP announced plans to buy it for $8 billion. At the time, Qualtrics was SAP鈥檚 second-largest acquisition ever, only behind the $8.3 billion acquisition of travel and expense management platform , according to . The acquisition was also Utah鈥檚 largest of the year.听

SAP announced in July 2020 that it instead intended to take Qualtrics public after all, and the enterprise software-maker filed formally for an IPO for Qualtrics in December.

鈥淲e decided that an IPO would provide the greatest opportunity for Qualtrics to grow the experience management category, serve its customers, explore its own acquisition strategy and continue building the best talent,鈥� SAP CEO said in a July statement. 鈥淪AP will remain Qualtrics鈥� largest and most important go-to-market and research and development (R&D) partner while giving Qualtrics greater independence to broaden its base by partnering and building out the entire experience management ecosystem.鈥�

Qualtrics鈥� acquisition听 was one of two $1 billion-plus acquisitions to come from the state in 2019, with buying employee benefits manager for $2.12 billion. It was also the largest acquisition of a Utah-based company ever, according to 附近上门 data. The $8 billion acquisition by SAP was around four times larger than the second-largest acquisition of a Utah company, when bought for $2 billion in September 2012.

As Kaiser put it, Utah companies are going for Silicon Valley prices, and he only expects transaction volume to climb. Mercato Partners鈥� portfolio companies have had five exits since March 2020, with three of those being over the $1 billion mark.听

Acquisitions in the billions

announced plans to acquire Salt Lake City-based in April for $1.2 billion. acquired for $1.15 billion last year, and bought for $1.1 billion. Other notable recent acquisitions of Utah companies are buying and buying .

鈥淚t鈥檚 not like one Utah company is buying another Utah company, this is much much broader than that,鈥� Kaiser said.

Qualtrics also marks the second notable public exit for a Utah-based company in recent months. , a biopharmaceutical company based in Salt Lake City, went public around three weeks after merging with a special purpose acquisition company.听听

To John Yoon, Mercato Partners鈥� vice president of marketing practice, tech companies being more flexible with remote work will only help Utah鈥檚 burgeoning tech scene and the next generation of tech companies.

鈥淚t starts with big companies encouraging people to move, or allowing people to move and once they move here, they don鈥檛 have to stay with the big company. And that鈥檚 where we鈥榲e started to step in as investors,鈥� Yoon said, referring to the phenomenon as the 鈥減ollination effect.鈥�

Startups in Utah will also benefit from the regional hubs that some large tech companies are starting to accommodate remote work, Kaiser said. Once talent moves to a place like Utah, Columbus or Minneapolis and settles down there, they could be more inclined to join a local startup.

鈥淭hey’ve set down roots, they鈥檝e seen how much easier life can be and they couple it with 鈥楴ow there’s a cool startup in town and they need a backend engineer and this is what I do,鈥欌�� Kaiser said.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias

Editor’s Note: This story was updated Monday to reflect Qualtrics’ increased IPO price range.