Veeva Systems’ Life Science Cloud IPO Is A Hit, Raising $217M And Closing Up 85%

Veeva Systems, an enterprise cloud provider for life sciences companies like Pfizer, IPO’d on the NYSE this morning, raising around $217 million by upping its share price $20. Veeva saw a pop of 83.5% in initial trading after starting at a value over $2.4 billion. Veeva closed at $37.16, up 85.8%.

Veeva’s public debut follows huge IPOs for fellow cloud providers Workday and Rocket Fuel, which are now both trading at over 2x their opening price.

Veeva jumped from $20 to $36.70 as soon as it hit the market. That’s impressive considering It originally planned to price shares between $12 and $14, and upped that to $16 to $18 last week, before locking in an even higher $20 per share price.

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Today Veeva offered 9.72 million shares with 3.325 million offered by other shareholders.

[Update: I spoke to Veeva CFO Tim Cabral about exactly how much Veeva will walk away from the IPO with. We originally reported that would be $194 million, but that didn’t take into account Veeva’s greenshoe (an extra set of shares sold), and its fees. Pre-greenshoe and fees, and if you count shares sold by Veeva’s investors, the total take is about $262 million. Minus fees that’s $242 million. Veeva’s share, minus what investors sold, comes out to about $181 million. And when you count the greenshoe but subtract fees on Veeva’s share, you get about $217 million. That’s the final dollar amount the cloud company will walk away with in its coffers to use on operation, expansion, and acquisitions.]

Veeva Public

Veeva was founded in 2007 and had raised just $7 million prior to its IPO, with $4 million coming Emergence Capital Partners. That’s makes Veeva a stunningly lean company as far as enterprise cloud standards go.

Veeva has over 170 customers in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries like Eli Lilly, Bayer, and Novartis. The company offers three big types of products. Veeva CRM helps clients sell more effectively, Veeva Vault handles content management and collaboration, and Veeva Network provides a directory of healthcare professionals.

Veeva has its headquarters in Pleasanton, California, plus offices in Philadelphia, London, Beijing, Barcelona, Budapest, Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, Singapore, and Sydney. The Mercury News reports that Veeva has turned a profit each of the last three years to generate $27 million in revenue during that time.

If the immediate success of Veeva’s IPO holds firm, it could encourage other cloud companies to go public.