Font ResizePLEASANTON -- Cloud software company Workday brought in more than $600 million in its initial public offering, then saw its stock shoot up more than 70 percent in its first day of public trading Friday. Company executives and analysts had plenty to say about the striking debut.
-- "It's a great validation of all the hard work that our employees have put in over the last seven years. Everybody is excited about this." - Aneel Bhusri, Workday's co-founder and co-CEO, in a telephone interview with the Mercury News.
-- "This is just a step along the way. This is just the start of the shift from the enterprise world to the cloud world. There is a lot more work to do. A lot more to accomplish," - Bhusri
-- "The additional money from the IPO will help us grow and expand. We have been hiring on a fairly aggressive clip and we expect that to continue. We expect to hire about 400 to 500 people by the end of 2013." - Workday Chief Financial Officer Mark Peek, in a telephone interview with the Mercury News.
-- "In all, a winning day for Workday, its investors and employees." - Sam Hamadeh, of independent data analysis firm PrivCo, in an email to the Mercury News.
-- "Today's trading evidences a "Duffield Premium" in Workday, where the Workday Co-Founder David Duffield (who sold his former HR software company PeopleSoft to Oracle (
-- "Workday's very strong performance -- and coming on the heels of strong performance from other recent IPOs (including B2B plays such as Palo Alto Networks and Splunk -- and select consumer plays such as Trulia) have combined to now forcefully reopen the IPO window. Strong private companies seeking IPOs should pursue and price them without further delay, as we know from recent history that the IPO window can shut down just as fast as it opened." - Hamadeh
-- "There are a number of companies that will ride the business-to-business enterprise wave. This will hopefully open up the market for some very good companies." - Ira Cohen, co-founder of software-investment company Updata Partners, in an interview with Reuters.
-- "Workday is emerging as a force to be reckoned with." - Mark Murphy, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, in a report.
-- "The structure of this particular company would make them one of the worst nightmares for their competitors (such as Oracle and Salesforce). ... They can frequently upgrade their software multiple times a year, keeping them ultracompetitive to these very bulky and very expensive systems" offered by larger competitors, which are "behemoths that have very structured, antiquated and slow-moving implementation processes." - Scott Sweet, partner at IPO Boutique, in telephone interview with Mercury News.
-- "Workday can grow when it's smaller, but the question becomes when they get in excess of a billion in revenue, can they still bolt on this high growth rate to justify its valuation?" - Rick Summer, Morningstar analyst, in an interview with Reuters.
-- "(Workday's) losses have been significant thus far, but I think the way they've been able to grow their revenues and the way that they'll be able to grow their revenues in the future ... can only allow them to grow their revenues and customer base at an exponential rate." - Sweet
-- "A customer will sign a three-year deal with Workday and they're going to get a monthly or annual payment for the next several years. The attractive thing to an IPO buyer is a recurring revenue stream." - John Jarve, a managing director at Menlo Ventures, in an interview with Reuters.
-- "There's millions of small companies who need a systematic way to manage human resources. As long as Oracle and others don't have the specific modules that a smaller business might need, there are going to be niches for players like Workday." - Charlie Smith, chief investment officer at Fort Pitt Capital Group, in an interview with Reuters.
Contact Jeremy C. Owens at 408-920-5876; follow him at Twitter.com/mercbizbreak.
