BlackLine Files for Secondary Offering

May 15, 2017 by Chris Lange

BlackLine Inc. (NASDAQ: BL) has filed an S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding its secondary offering. The company did not mention any pricing details in the filing, but its offering is valued up to $100 million, although this is usually just a placeholder.

The underwriters for the offering are Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Pacific Crest Securities, Raymond James, William Blair and JMP Securities.

This company has created a comprehensive cloud-based software platform designed to transform and modernize accounting and finance operations for organizations of all types and sizes. Its secure, scalable platform supports critical accounting processes such as the financial close, account reconciliation, intercompany accounting and controls assurance. By introducing software to automate these processes and to enable them to function continuously, BlackLine is enhancing real-time visibility into its operations.

Critical accounting and finance processes underlie the integrity of an organization’s financial reports. The lack of effective accounting and finance tools can result in inefficient and cumbersome processes and, in some cases, accounting errors, restatements and write-offs, as well as material weaknesses and significant deficiencies. Traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems do not generally provide effective solutions for processes handled outside of an organization’s general ledger, such as balance sheet account reconciliation, intercompany transaction accounting and the broader financial close process.

In the filing, BlackLine described its finances as follows:

For the years ended December 31, 2016 and 2015, we had revenues of $123.1 million and $83.6 million, respectively, and we incurred net losses of $39.2 million and $24.7 million, respectively. For the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016, we had revenues of $38.6 million and $26.6 million, respectively, and we incurred net losses of $9.0 million and $9.3 million, respectively.

The company will not receive any proceeds from the offering; instead the selling shareholders will.

Shares of BlackLine closed Friday at $31.92, with a consensus analyst price target of $35.00 and a post-IPO trading range of $21.66 to $33.71.

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