CommVault Orders Another Round

Almost a year after making its IPO, data protection software vendor CommVault has announced a secondary public offering to wipe out a sizeable debt. (See CommVault Announces Offering.)

The vendor, which raised $161 million, hitting the high end of its $14.50 forecast last September, will now offer an additional 7.9 million shares at $17, potentially raising over $134 million. Of these shares, CommVault is selling 300,000 and stockholders are selling just over 7.5 million. That leaves about 42.5 million shares of the original stock.

Credit Suisse Securities, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch are serving as the joint bookrunners of the offering, with Thomas Weisel Partners, RBC Capital Markets, and C.E. Unterberg acting as co-managers.

In documents filed with the SEC, CommVault explains that the proceeds of the secondary offering will be used to pay the principal and interest on a $6.3 million loan.

The vendor anticipates net proceeds of $4.3 million from the offering, and will also use $2 million of its existing cash and equivalents. This should only make a small dent in the CommVault coffers -- the filing reveals that the vendor had $65 million in cash at the end of March.Clipper Group managing director Mike Kahn posits two possible reasons for CommVault's move. "With interest rates going up, and people saying that might be the case for a while, there's a lot of people trying to get out of debt that could be onerous," he tells Byte and Switch.

Another possibility is that CommVault is gearing up for some M&A. "There are a lot of acquisitions going on out there. They may be looking at some of this nest egg to allow them to fill in pieces," Kahn added, although he was unable to name any potential targets.

CommVault's most recent technology move was into the archiving market. (See CommVault Enters Archive Market .)

Even before it made its initial offering, CommVault had long been considered the best IPO prospect among private storage firms. Unlike Riverbed, Double-Take, and Isilon, CommVault was profitable pre-IPO and had the most revenue of the group.

Oceanport, N.J.-based CommVault is still bringing in the cash, posting total revenues of just over $151 million for its most recent financial year, up from $109.5 million in the prior year. (See CommVault Reports Earnings, CommVault Reports Earnings, and CommVault Goes Public.) The vendor also recently added Bull as an OEM partner. (See Bull Takes CommVault As OEM.)This followed HDS's decision to extend its own OEM deal with CommVault, as the storage vendor attempts to bolster its CDP strategy. (See HDS Hitches Commvault's CDP and CommVault Adds CDP to HDS.)

As of March this year, CommVault had licensed its software to just under 6,000 customers including ACE Hardware, Clifford Chance, and the U.K.'s Department for International Development, according to the SEC filing.

CommVault's secondary offering caps a flurry of recent IPO activity in the storage space. Last week, for example, de-duplication specialist (and CommVault technology partner) Data Domain revealed plans to raise $78 million from an IPO later this year. (See Data Domain Prices $78M IPO and Data Domain, CommVault Partner.)

This followed similar moves from data warehousing specialist Netezza, which filed its own S-1 earlier this year, following in the footsteps of Mellanox, Isilon, Double-Take, and Riverbed. (See Netezza Nudges IPO and Riverbed Comes Out at $9.75.) More recently, virtualization behemoth VMware has edged closer to its own public offering, and IPO talk continues to swirl around Voltaire and Force10. (See VMware Closer to IPO, VMware Files With SEC, Voltaire Nabs Cash Amid Speculation, and Force10 Round Hits $113M .)

In early trading today, shares of CommVault rose 24 cents (1.36 percent) to $17.85.James Rogers, Senior Editor Byte and Switch