Vertical SaaS, Today — 9th Edition (6 month look back!)

Anna Khan
2 min readJul 27, 2023

--

We’re back with our 9th edition of Vertical SaaS, Today — our monthly round up of how vSaaS is performing in the public markets.

For this Edition, I wanted to look back on the last 6 months of Vertical SaaS public stock movement — which may suggest more interesting data than on a month to month level.

  • To start, we are now down two companies from when we began. This was my early hypothesis when I started this account — the fact that we would see PE sponsored and strategic deals given the depressed public stock market. We started the index with 21 companies and are now down to 19, given the sale of Duck Creek Technologies to Vista for $2.6B went through. Black Knight will be the next to go once it is processed, and we will be down to 18 companies.
  • The other substantial change is Shopify’s massive rally up. At the end of January, Shopify’s market cap was $63.9B and it was trading at an 11.5x EV/LTM Rev multiple. Today it has gone back up to a 13.4x EV/LTM Rev multiple and has a market cap of $82.9B. That’s a whopping 29.7% increase.
  • The average market cap of a public vertical SaaS stock went up ~$2B from $12.1B to $14.2B.
  • Gross margins have generally stayed consistent, despite the 6 month period. Median remains in the 56% range.
  • LTM Total Revenue 1 yr Growth % has substantially slowed down. 6 months ago, the median company was growing 25.03%, while today the median company is growing 19.31%. This is likely due to execs dampening expectations to the street given the difficult market.
  • The EV/LTM Rev multiple has not decreased. On average, a vertical SaaS public company was trading at 7.0x 6 months ago and it is trading at the same multiple today.
Vertical SaaS Today, 9th Edition

Key Metrics (As of 07/26/23)

  • Total Number of Companies: 19— Down from 21 since we started the Vertical SaaS roundup. Duck Creek Technologies acquisition finally went through.
  • Total Market Cap: $282.9B
  • Largest Market Cap: Shopify again at the top spot with $82.86B.
  • Lowest Market Cap: Blend Labs is still the lowest market cap at $309.7M.
  • Average Market Cap: $14.15B.
  • Average LTM Total Revenue: $1.69B. Median substantially lower at $881.4M.
  • Highest LTM Total Revenue: $7.1B. Constellation Software still claims the top spot. Shopify is a close second at $5.9B.
  • Average LTM Gross Margin: No real change, still at 55.9%.
  • Highest EV/LTM Revenue Multiple: Shopify at 13.4x. Veeva is a close second at 13.2x.
  • Lowest EV/LTM Revenue Multiple: 2U at 1.3x.
  • Average EV/LTM Revenue Multiple: 7.0x.
  • Median EV/LTM Revenue Multiple: 7.0x.

Follow us at @vSaaSToday for more info.

--

--

Anna Khan

GP @CRV, Alum @HarvardHBS @Stanford. I like a bagel with attitude.