OVHcloud, a European cloud service provider, today announced that it is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) to list its stock on the Euronext Paris. As a public company, OVHcloud intends to position itself as the only pure-play, scaled European cloud service provider, and to expand its global footprint in the Americas and Asia. Notably, the Klaba family will retain a majority stake in OVHcloud following the planned IPO.
OVHcloud – Overview
OVHcloud provides 1.6 million enterprises, as well as the public sector in over 140 countries with private, public, and web cloud services. Specifically, the company offers its customers performance, price predictability, flexibility, and scalability for their workloads. Overall, OVHcloud has 2.4k+ employees and an ecosystem of 350+ partners.
Digital Infrastructure
OVHcloud manages 31 data centers across 12 sites, hosting 400k servers. The company’s strategy is to manufacture its own servers, build its own data centers, and deploy its own fiber-optic network.
OVHcloud owns a dedicated global fiber-optic network with 20 terabits per second of capacity. Additionally, the company has 34 redundant points of presence (PoPs) to handle growing volumes of data.
Competitive Differentiation
OVHcloud offers similar services to the largest cloud service providers including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
However, the company differentiates itself as a niche cloud service provider in a number of distinct ways. Indeed, OVHcloud typically targets individuals and small businesses, simple use cases, and limited geographic markets. Closer comparable companies to OVHcloud include cloud service providers DigitalOcean, Heroku, Linode, and Vultr.
Ownership of OVHcloud Pre-IPO
The Klaba family, which includes founder Octave Klaba, own a majority of OVHcloud. Additionally, in 2016, private equity firms KKR and TowerBrook Capital Partners purchased a 20% stake in the business. At this time, KKR and TowerBrook invested €250m into OVHcloud to fund the company’s global expansion.
Cloud Service Provider Growth Drivers – OVHcloud
OVHcloud foresees a large and rapidly expanding addressable cloud market driven by structural digital transformation that leads to increased cloud adoption. In particular, the company provides solutions to capture the growing demand for hybrid and multi-cloud deployments:
Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid cloud deployments leverage a combination of different environments including on-premise, private cloud, and public cloud. Importantly, this enables developers and different business lines to utilize the optimal technology for the specific requirements of their workloads.
READ MORE: Hybrid Cloud – What is it? and How Does it Work?
Multi-Cloud
Multi-cloud deployments have gained importance as individuals and businesses match their applications with the most suitable technology stacks and pricing models to run them. At the same time, multi-cloud deployments avoid vendor lock-in, which is similar to legacy IT infrastructure services.
Financial Information – OVHcloud Pre-IPO
For OVHcloud’s fiscal year ending August 31, 2020, the company generated revenues of €632m and EBITDA of €255m (40% margin). Notably, OVHcloud’s international revenue, outside of France, represented ~50% of total revenue in fiscal year 2020.
In terms of timing for the initial public offering (IPO) of OVHcloud’s stock on the Euronext Paris, it would make sense for the company to leverage its full-year financials for its upcoming fiscal year ending August 31, 2021. Indeed, a completion date of OVHcloud’s IPO prior to year-end 2021 is congruent with this timing.
