Asana files for direct listing amid slew of software IPOs

[NEW YORK] Asana, a corporate software maker started by a Facebook co-founder, filed to go public via a direct listing, disclosing a net loss that has more than doubled year over year along with growing revenue.

The San Francisco-based startup filed paperwork for the listing Monday. Unlike a traditional initial public offering, no new money is raised in a direct listing, which usually sees existing investors start selling their stock as soon as trading starts with no lockup period.

Asana reported a net loss of US$36 million in the three months through April on revenue of US$48 million. That compared to a loss of US$15 million on revenue of US$28 million in the same period a year earlier.

The company, which makes workplace productivity software, was started by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. As of Jan 31, Asana had more than 3.2 million activated accounts and over 1.2 million paid users, according to the filing.

Asana said its business could further benefit from the shift to work from home. "Distributed and remote teams can use Asana as a single, real-time plan of record, reducing the need for messaging threads and video calls to coordinate work," it said.

Asana has recently been trading on the secondary market at a value of around US$5 billion, a person with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg this month. The secondary market valuation is an important element of a company's price discovery process in a direct listing, since no new shares are sold.

Its largest shareholders include Benchmark Capital, Al Gore's Generation IM fund and entities affiliated with Founders Fund.

Asana plans to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The NYSE, a subsidiary of InterContinentalExchange, has been the venue for both of the high-profile direct listings so far, Spotify Technology and Slack Technologies.

While companies planning direct listings don't hire banks in traditional underwriting roles, Asana is working with Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Credit Suisse Group and Jefferies Financial Group as financial advisers.

BLOOMBERG