The 2021 tech IPO pipeline is filled with high-growth cloud stocks — as long as the market holds up

Published Sun, Nov 22 20208:24 AM EST

(This story is for CNBC PRO subscribers only.) Snowflake is by far the most valuable company in the 2020 IPO class, sporting a market cap of over $73 billion. As tech investors look to 2021, they may not see another Snowflake, but they'll find plenty of fast-growing enterprise companies on the horizon. According to venture capitalists and tech bankers, at least a dozen companies could raise $1 billion or more each in IPOs next year, though some may choose to go public through direct listings. The level of activity largely depends on how the market performs in a volatile economy, which is being hit hard by another surge in coronavirus cases . Based on the market's recent strength, there's reason for optimism. Following a post-election rally that's lifted stock indexes near record highs, consumer tech companies, including Airbnb , DoorDash and Wish, are rushing to hit the public market by year-end instead of waiting until 2021. For investors more focused on software, next year's roster is potentially rich with companies that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from private investors and are now big enough and growing fast enough to command hefty multiples. For comps, they can look to Snowflake, which trades at over 60 times forward revenue, or software-as-a-services (SaaS) companies like Zoom , Coupa and Cloudflare that have forward price-to-sales ratios above 30. At the top of next year's wish list are UiPath, Databricks, HashiCorp, Tanium and Confluent, as well as Rubrik and GitLab. They're each worth billions of dollars and are well past $100 million of annual revenue. Most have growth rates at 50% or higher. "Next year is going to be a year of enterprise SaaS and consumer subscription companies that eventually reach escape velocity," said Karan Mehandru , a general partner at Trinity Ventures and investor in data management software vendor Cohesity and sales software provider Outreach. "Almost all still have massive 10 to 20x potential — even beyond what public markets see them at and maybe even much higher if everything goes well." The IPO market was quiet in the first half of 2020 as investors adjusted to the drastic changes in the economy. But the floodgates opened in September. Led by Snowflake and Unity Software , it was the busiest month ever for the New York Stock Exchange. The late-year push by Airbnb and others will turn 2020 into a fairly active year overall, though scores of companies pushed back their plans because of uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and the election. New options to go public Companies now have a whole menu of options available as they survey the public market. The traditional IPO has evolved in ways that allow employees to sell some shares rather than wait for a six-month lock-up to expire. Direct listings are available to companies who don't need to raise capital and would rather not dilute existing shareholders. And now special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) are blowing up, allowing companies to go public through a reverse merger instead of wading through a taxing IPO process. Meanwhile, the broad trend of software moving out of traditional data centers and into the cloud has accelerated during the pandemic. This is in part because employees need to be able to communicate and collaborate from remote locations and quickly access their most critical data. It's a big theme to consider in next year's IPO class. UiPath , for example, saw its private market valuation soar to $10.2 billion in a July funding round, up from $7 billion a year earlier. Annualized revenue topped $400 million, quadruple its rate from mid-2018. The company's software automates back-office processes and other tasks and became more central to businesses dealing with remote workforces and supply chain disruptions. Databricks, which provides software that allows companies to analyze and use large data sets, was valued at $6.2 billion last October. Since the Covid-19 outbreak, clients have become more reliant on Databricks, while companies in health care and pharmaceutical development have turned to its software for patient tracking, monitoring clinical trials and disease detection. The company topped $350 million in annualized revenue in the third quarter, after reaching $200 million last year. Databricks and UiPath were ranked 36th and 50th, respectively, on the CNBC's Disruptor 50 list this year. HashiCorp saw a jump in demand from some of the same industries. The company provides cloud infrastructure automation software that can be used across Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as well as cloud platforms from Google and Oracle . Coming off four straight years of doubling revenue, HashiCorp was valued at $5.1 billion in March, just as the coronavirus was hitting the U.S. GitLab and HashiCorp were uniquely prepared for a pandemic because they were already operating with distributed workforces and developing technology designed to be used for people in disparate locations. Companies use GitLab's cloud tools to share code and collaborate on software development. Confluent is best known for its event streaming software, which allows companies to aggregate data from different business units into one place. It was valued at $4.5 billion in April , following a 450% jump in cloud revenue last year, when total revenue almost doubled. CEO Jay Kreps told CNBC in June that the migration to the cloud sped up during Covid. Cloud security vendor Tanium was valued at $9 billion in a June financing round, while Rubrik, which sells data management software, hasn't raised a round since early 2019 at a valuation of $3.3 billion. Both said that they've been helping customers deal with the heightened risk of security threats and cyberattacks caused by the coronavirus. Key metrics for software IPOs As investors assess the most important metrics for potential IPOs, revenue growth is still key, with 40% to 50% or higher being the target. While profitability remains rare because of high costs associated with research and development and sales and marketing, investors say they want to see strong gross margins and improving sales efficiency. That helps indicate there's a clear path to positive free cash flow. Net retention of users is an important figure along with increased revenue from existing customers, because those metrics quantify a product's value. "It shows you how inherently sticky the product is, how happy customers are," said Matt Murphy , a partner at Menlo Ventures who focuses on software. "If the only way to grow is hand-to-hand combat of getting another customer and keeping up with those customers that churn or leave, it's really hard to grow business efficiently." Max Gazor , a general partner at venture firm CRV, said investors want to see customer loyalty. He described HashiCorp as not just a product suite but a "belief system that you can manage infrastructure." The loyal community keeps the company from having an obvious competitor, he said. What the cloud boom has also shown is that companies with a narrow focus can become substantial businesses if the problem their addressing is significant enough. Gazor pointed to the successes of Okta , Datadog and Twilio , which have soared since going public in recent years and are now worth between $27 billion and $48 billion. Okta provides software for security and identity management, Datadog sells monitoring software and Twilio focuses on cloud communications. They all compete with much larger companies but have been able to land big and growing contracts by establishing themselves as critical vendors. "One particular niche in the past was assumed to be too small to be a large standalone company," said Gazor. "Now that assumption is revisited." As Murphy explained it, " The market is unpacking, modularizing almost every bit of functionality." Confluent, which commercializes the data management platform Apache Kafka, is one of the emerging companies that found such a niche. In the old world of databases, Confluent's event streaming technology might have been attached to a bigger company, said Murphy. With the way software is deployed today, that's not necessary. "A pain point turns into a company," he said. For all the companies in the queue, the ability to tell a compelling story is crucial. Their valuations are already so high that, to get investors onboard at these prices, they need to show a huge market opportunity and spell out how they're going get there ahead of the competition. Mehandru highlighted Stripe , the payment processing software company that's worth $36 billion and ranked first on CNBC's Disruptor 50 list. "If somebody's coming in at that price, they better believe it can get to over $100 billion," said Mehandru. "That doesn't happen unless the founder and team present a compelling image of how the company could get to $100 billion." WATCH: 'It's been an incredibly busy 2020 for IPOs,' NYSE president says

Sun shines outside of the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York.

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(This story is for CNBC PRO subscribers only.)

Snowflake is by far the most valuable company in the 2020 IPO class, sporting a market cap of over $73 billion. As tech investors look to 2021, they may not see another Snowflake, but they'll find plenty of fast-growing enterprise companies on the horizon.

According to venture capitalists and tech bankers, at least a dozen companies could raise $1 billion or more each in IPOs next year, though some may choose to go public through direct listings. The level of activity largely depends on how the market performs in a volatile economy, which is being hit hard by another surge in coronavirus cases.

Based on the market's recent strength, there's reason for optimism. Following a post-election rally that's lifted stock indexes near record highs, consumer tech companies, including Airbnb, DoorDash and Wish, are rushing to hit the public market by year-end instead of waiting until 2021.