The CEO of GitLab looks at the public market after the secondary value valued it at $ 6 billion

Sid Sijbrandij, CEO of GitLab, who just sold a share of employees who valued its software start-up at $ 6 billion, said he still wants to make the company public, though he is looking at many more options. those that were available in the past.

Sijbrandij on Thursday confirmed CNBC reports since late November on the company’s valuation in its secondary offering, which allowed employees to sell up to 20% of their net worth. It provided additional details on the size of the transaction and investors, as well as revenue growth and new customers.

GitLab cloud-based software is used by developers to share code and collaborate on projects. The company, which competes with Microsoft’s GitHub and Atlassian, has experienced a boom in demand as more industries have relied on digital software and tools to run their operations. GitLab specializes in helping programmers make product updates faster, reducing operating costs, and accelerating development.

GitLab reached $ 150 million in annual recurring revenue, Sijbrandij said, after experiencing 74% growth in the most recent quarter. During 2020, the company signed three major airlines and a travel management provider, although the travel industry was forced to make dramatic cuts due to the pandemic.

“It was the industry hardest hit last year and they even still bought it,” Sibrandij said. “It’s been a tough year for many of our customers.”

In its “team manual” on its website, GitLab had openly stated its plan to go public in November 2020. After the pandemic that hit early last year, causing a wider economy, the company dismissed its debut schedule, indicating that an audience list was still on the roadmap.

Sijbrandij said he did the secondary to “give our team members a chance to benefit from the value we created together.” The $ 6 billion valuation exceeds $ 2.7 billion in the funding round at the end of 2019.

GitLab allowed current and former employees with own resources to sell a combined total of 4.9 million shares, raising the total offering to $ 195 million. Investors buying the shares included Alta Park, HMI Capital, OMERS Growth Equity, TCV and Verition. For the transaction, GitLab used Nasdaq Private Market, which specializes in helping private companies provide secondary liquidity.

Sijbrandij said there is no timetable for a public market debut, although people familiar with the matter told CNBC in November that it was likely to arrive in 2021. The company has several ways to consider putting in stock market that did not exist or were relatively untested before last year.

One option is direct listing, the path taken by Spotify, Slack, Palantir and Asana and followed by Roblox, which allows employees to sell shares to new investors immediately. Other companies such as Unity, Airbnb and DoorDash, chose a hybrid auction that allowed management to choose a price based on bids. And there is the opportunity to be made public through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) or a reverse merger carried out by the so-called blank verification entity.

“There are many more options and we follow the market,” Sijbrandij said. SPACs present an “interesting alternative that is also on our radar,” he said.

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