Veeva Systems Goes Public
J. Bruce Daley is a former vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.
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A company whose founders include Siebel Systems alumni Matt Wallach and Mark Armenante has gone public. Veeva Systems (NYSE: VEEV), a cloud based software solution for life sciences, has made an initial public offering of 13,045,000 shares at $20 per share.
The price of the stock quickly went from $20 to $49 - a 245% rise - making Veeva one of the hottest IPO's of the year. The company's valuation is currently around $5.25 billion and the P/E ratio is 104 - meaning at the current rate of profitability investors would be paid back in the year 2114.
Founded in 2007 on the premise that industry-specific business problems would best be addressed by industry-specific, cloud-based solutions, Veeva believes this approach is particularly relevant to global, complex and heavily regulated industries. So Veeva sells software- as-a-services (SaaS) that enables pharmaceutical and other life sciences companies to use the cloud-based architectures and mobile applications with life science specific functionality and regulatory compliance.
Although there are some common business processes within life sciences companies that horizontal cloud-based solutions have been able to address, (such as payroll and expense management), the health sciences industry has som industry-specific needs such as new drug submissions, quality management, regulated marketing, and non cash sales.
As a result, before Veeva was founded, life sciences companies were largely unable to implement cloud based solutions. The company's products include:
Veeva CRM a customer relationship management solution for sales representatives customized with industry-specific functions such as drug sample tracking with electronic signature capture, healthcare affiliations management, and the ability to conduct interactive demonstrations with physicians on a mobile device, with or without an internet connection.
Veeva Vault a regulated content management solution, that manages the collection, management and organization of documents required for clinical trials that can manage complex versioning, workflows and approvals for promotional materials in compliance with government regulations.
Veeva Network a recently announced customer master solution that enables the creation and maintenance of the healthcare provider and organization master data.
Veeva utilizes a multi-tenant architecture which allows the company to rapidly deliver new functionality to all customers simultaneously and enabling customers to benefit from innovations and comply with frequently changing regulations more quickly because all customers are using the same version of the product.A multi-tenant architecture is one that allows multiple customers to use the same hardware and software infrastructure while keeping each customer’s data logically separated.
In addition, the company's global employee base, including our professional services team, gives it insights into industry best practices that can be more quickly incorporated into the Veeva solution. In addition, we believe that the the data generated from their applications can provide unique insights about the industry.
As of July, Veeva had 593 employees, including approximately 190 employees located outside North America, primarily in Europe, Japan and China. Veeva solutions are designed to enable compliance with global regulatory requirements and are available in 27 languages. For its fiscal year ended January 31, 2013, international revenues constituted over one-third of its total revenues.
As of August the company had 170 life sciences customers, including 33 of the 50 largest global pharmaceutical companies. Veeva has been implemented in over 75 countries, ranging from deployments within a single division o to major deployments at some of the largest global pharmaceutical companies. Customers include Bayer Healthcare AG, Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Eli Lilly and Company, Gilead Sciences, Inc., Merck & Co., Inc. and Novartis International AG.
In fiscal year 2013, total revenues were $129.5 million representing year-over-year growth of 111%. The company is profitable and generated net income of $18.8 million for the last fiscal year.
The company is actively recruiting partners and hiring. A good contact on the hiring side is Kelly Abraham, senior recruiter. On the partnership side Melanie Watkins Director, Software Alliances at Veeva Systems is a good contact.
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