What is SquareSpace
Nowadays, many agents of little and medium-sized services face the requirement of constructing their websites if they wish to compete with major market players. Sites assist in increasing sales and increase the performance of their functional activities. We can discover small dining establishments, shops, workshops, confectioneries, and other representatives of offline commerce on the Internet. This procedure was increased by the coronavirus pandemic when it became impossible to accept orders and sell items in an old-fashioned method. The e-commerce sector took off. SquareSpace is a company that assists individual entrepreneurs in creating websites. It has applied for a DPO at the NYSE. The business’s shares will be traded under the “SQSP” ticker, and its DPO is set up for May 19th. Let’s go over the business’s organization.
SquareSpace organization.
SquareSpace is headquartered in NY City and was founded in 2004. It was a Saas platform for creating websites but gradually included some additional functions later on. The current global upgrade to the platform was in 2012. As of now, SquareSpace’s deal consists of:
- – Tools for developing a comprehensive website.
- – Blogging.
- – Webhosting.
- – Web marketing, business email, and SEO tools. The platform is easy to use and assists millions of clients from 180 nations to produce their sites with unique styles without having any programming abilities. The company primarily runs in the B2B sector.
The clients of the company have access to the following advantages:
1. Presence on the Internet. Clients of SquareSpace can produce professional websites, buy domains, register social media network profiles. The business invested in designer groups to establish innovative style patterns.
2. Tools for commerce. The services of the company are popular with small online shops and marketplaces. SquareSpace provides the entire infrastructure for processing orders and accepting payments.
3. Thanks to the business’s services, clients can email newsletters, communicate with users, and perform search optimization. Analytical tools from SquareSpace enable to handle sales, conversion, and traffic.
SquareSpace sells its services based on subscription. By the DPO time, the company has 3.7 million users, and this amount doubled in 2020. All these positive factors had a strong influence on the business’s financial performance and its market share. We’ll talk about this a bit later.
The sales and rivals of SquareSpace.
The Saas platform sales tripled, up to $233.4 billion, from 2016 to 2019, as stated in the International Data Corporation survey. By 2025, it may reach $456 billion. The crucial consumers in the business’s target audience are specific business owners representing small and medium-sized services.
The Kaufman index says: 540,000 new business owners are signed up each month in the USA alone. According to Clutch, as approximated by SquareSpace, there are over 800 million business owners worldwide, 46% of which are not present on the Internet at all.
The business’s platform is an exceptional tool for producing your online store. In this light, a study from Statista appears rather relevant as it says that the variety of online purchasers in the whole world may reach 2.1 billion individuals this year. Services will try to please this need, thus increasing the variety of SquareSpace customers. It is the reason that the business has a great perspective for the rapid development of its sales. Significant rivals of SquareSpace are:
– Shopify (NYSE: STORE).
– Wix (NASDAQ: WIX).
Financial performance
Unlike lots of other tech companies, SquareSpace produces net earnings. That’s why we will evaluate this specification together with the revenue. In the S-1/ A kind, the business offered additional data for the first quarter of 2021.
At the end of 2020, the net profit was $30.59 million, and that’s a 47.39% decrease relative to 2019. In 2019, the net revenue equated to $58.15 million, with a 34.86% boost compared to 2018. The net revenue decline happened due to the increasing scale of expenses on researches and marketing.
The company’s sales were 621.15 million in 2020, a 28.14% increase relative to 2019. In 2019, this specification reached $484.75 million, which’s a 24.34% boost if compared with 2018. The typical yearly revenue growth is 26.23%. That’s why we can categorize the company as rapidly growing. For such companies, profit is a more important parameter.
The USA represents 70% of the total sales volume, but the share of other countries in the business’s income increases with each passing year. If such characteristics continue, the USA share may decrease to 50%, therefore helping to diversify its company and increase its stability.
The gross profit of SquareSpace included 29.87% in 2020 relative to 2019, approximately $522.81 million. Compared to 2018, in 2019, the company’s sales increased by 26.01%, up to $402.84 million. If marketing and new investigates expenses are cut, there is a high possibility of getting the net profit. As we can see, the gross profit increases in proportion to the income.
Strong and weak sides of SquareSpace
After the business’s service model has ended up being entirely clear, we may examine all advantages and disadvantages of purchasing SquareSpace shares.
These points may be considered as the company’s strong sides:
- – SquareSpace operates on an appealing market of Saas platforms.
- – The business’s item is “all-in-one” and handles prospective customer requirements.
- – The earnings growth rate surpasses 25%.
- – The business produces the net earnings.
- – Noise management.
- – Multinational nature of the organization.
Danger aspects of investing in SquareSpace shares are the following:
- – Unsteady net revenue, the business pays no dividends.
- – Strong rivals – any slight mistake may result in a significant decline in the variety of customers.
- – The company’s organization expanded due to the coronavirus pandemic, and this positive result will slowly decrease.
DPO details and evaluation of SquareSpace capitalization
During the most recent round of funding, the business raised $300 million. SquareSpace will go public through the DPO (Direct Public Offering) instead of a traditional IPO. That’s why there is no rate range here. The company is planning to sell 40.2 A-class shares. The last time the company offered such shares was in 2019 at $24.52.
Financial specialists of the DPO are People Capital Markets, RBC Capital Markets, Goldman Sachs, Mizuho Securities USA, Citigroup, KeyBanc Capital Markets, Piper Sandler, and BofA Securities.
To examine the business’s potential capitalization, we use a multiplier, Price-to-Sales Ratio (P/S). Rivals of SquareSpace have an average P/S of 27.5. As a result, the possible capitalization may be up to $17.05 billion (27.5 * 0.62 billion).
Considering the growth rate and prospects of the company’s target audience, we would suggest SquareSpace shares for mid-term investments.
