A March initial public offering, two acquisitions, and three strong quarters.
Those milestones were just part of the 2017 storyline of Irvine-based data analytics software maker Alteryx Inc., which stormed out the gate after going public and now sits at No. 14 among Orange County’s most-valued public companies, with a recent market cap of $1.5 billion.
“Yeah, it’s been a very busy year,” said Chief Executive and co-founder Dean Stoecker, who groomed the business for two decades before leading the first IPO here since Glaukos Corp. in San Clemente raised $188 million in June 2015, and the first local tech IPO since December 2013, when Irvine-based Kofax raised $11 million.
Stoecker and his shareholders have enjoyed the coming-out party. Shares of Alteryx are up about 60% in the first nine months—and business is strong.
“We’ve posted great numbers,” he told the Business Journal late last month.
They’re the driving force behind his selection as Businessperson of the Year in the technology sector.
Start with $114 million—the net proceeds Alteryx raised in the IPO after selling 9 million shares at $14 per share. In September the lockup provision expired. Insider selling was modest. Stoecker netted $12.7 million selling 600,000 shares, a fraction of his holdings. He owns 15.5% of the company, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. On paper that’s just north of $225 million at the Dec. 27 closing price, and just south of the Business Journal’s OC’s Wealthiest “Mendoza Line” of $250 million.
The windfall hasn’t changed his day-to-day routine, which includes joining sales calls and meetings, and talking up analysts and other Wall Streeters.
“As a sales guy, I kind of enjoy that,” said Stoecker, who launched predecessor firm SRC with Olivia Duane Adams and Ned Harding.
Beating the Street in three consecutive quarters surely helps.
The software maker posted revenue of $34.2 million in the third quarter, up 52% from a year earlier and topping analyst estimates of $32 million.
Alteryx trimmed its operating loss to $2.6 million versus $3.9 million. Wall Street predicted slightly wider losses.
The company ended the third quarter with 3,054 customers, a 49% jump from a year earlier.
“We see this $28 billion addressable market that we talked about in the IPO being ready and wanting modern platforms like ours,” Stoecker said.
Alteryx’ customers pay a subscription fee for its analytics software to integrate data, monetize content, forecast sales, map retail expansion plans, and compare sales and product placement, among other features.
The cloud company rolled out four products last year, with 2017 sales on pace to grow 50% to $129 million.
Bump
The company ran into some bumps in the road along the way.
Alteryx was at the center of a data breach in October when it exposed an online database of sensitive information on roughly 123 million U.S. households, according to media reports.
The data set included a range of information, such as addresses, income and other financial history, and appeared to belong to Alteryx customer and credit ratings agency Experian PLC, which operates its U.S. headquarters from Costa Mesa. The information was accessible to users with an Amazon Web Services account.
“It does not include names, credit card numbers, social security numbers, bank account information or passwords,” the company said in a statement sent to the Business Journal. “When we discovered this issue, we removed the file from AWS and also added a layer of additional security to the AWS bucket where the file was stored.”
Culture Club
Alteryx acquired Brooklyn, N.Y.-based data software maker Yhat Inc. in June on undisclosed terms and debuted a service developed from another recent purchase.
The new Alteryx Connect offering targets large corporate customers, allowing users to find, create, collaborate and share data-focused reports and related documents. The platform was developed from technology acquired through its January buy of Czech Republic software maker Semanta, which specializes in metadata management and oversight.
Yhat’s software provides data scientists and analysts with tools to develop, manage and deploy machine-learning models for internet and mobile applications.
Alteryx’ sales growth and increased offerings placed it among the most talked-about software-as-a-service companies on Wall Street last year, especially in the white-hot space of business intelligence and analytics.
It enters 2018 as the 18th-largest software employer in OC, with about 150 local workers.
Stoecker, who made the Business Journal’s OC50 list of the most influential people for the first time last year, is big on work culture and philanthropy.
Alteryx’ open-concept, 40,000-square-foot headquarters at the Park Place campus features a 1962 double pass-through Volkswagen Bus outfitted with a conference room and gas-caskets-turned-beer-taps.Â
He pushed the 2016 launch of Alteryx for Good, a corporate philanthropic program to empower his employees and customers to drive social change through data and analytics.
“It’s become a rallying cause of employees within the company,” he said.
He just started a foundation with his wife, Angie, to elevate opportunities for underserved students, a mission that will take more prominence this year.
“It’s obviously been a seminal year for us,” Stoecker said. “It’s been the culmination of a long journey the last 20 years.”
