Snowflake Blitzes Wall Street: The Information’s Tech Briefing

We won’t make any more jokes about Snowflake melting under Wall Street’s spotlight. The data analytics firm had a spectacular opening day as a public company, its stock more than doubling from its $120 a share IPO price to close at $255 after trading as high as $299. It’s proof of the pent-up demand for tech IPOs, which should be good news for the flood of companies going public in the next few weeks.

Snowflake is a distinct case, to be sure. Clearly, there are a lot of investors who are very bullish on the growth potential of its business—the company makes software that businesses use to analyze and store large amounts of data. As we explained in a story about Snowflake earlier this year, demand for that kind of product is rising, given how much data is being generated by mobile devices, cars and retail stores. And Snowflake can brag of having stood up to competitive offerings from both Microsoft and Amazon.