Rimini Gets Tired Of Waiting, Files For IPO

November 11, 2013 Alex Woodie

When it comes to going public, it is apparently now or never for Rimini Street, the biggest provider of third-party maintenance and support services for Oracle and SAP customers and their ERP, CRM, and BI applications. The Las Vegas company announced last week it has filed the necessary paperwork to make an initial public offering (IPO) of stock.

Rimini has talked about going public for several years. But company representatives have said repeatedly that they wanted to wrap up some pesky legal matters with Oracle before moving forward with the IPO plans. Oracle filed suit against Rimini in early 2010 over alleged theft of intellectual property, and Rimini countersued several months later over alleged anti-competitive business tactics. Those lawsuits drag on in U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada in Las Vegas.

Apparently, Rimini CEO Seth Ravin felt it was time to move forward with the IPO plans despite the fact that the lawsuits linger. Or perhaps Ravin has just gotten used to fighting legal battles with Oracle. After all, Oracle is still fighting SAP over TomorrowNow, the third-party support company that Ravin co-founded in 1998 and sold to SAP in 2006. That lawsuit was first filed in 2007, and still hasn’t been completely resolved.

The folks at Rimini wouldn’t share any more details about their plans to go public. The timeline of the IPO, the amount of the offer, and the stock exchange selection are all items that Rimini will address at some point in the future.

One thing is for certain: tech stocks are hot at the moment. Twitter‘s IPO last week delivered the type of soaring valuations that may help to erase the bitter memory of Facebook’s big IPO flop in 2012. The Dow Jones and S&P 500 are also at or near historic highs, which fuels the wealth effect and (somewhat counter-intuitively) emboldens consumers to venture into the stock market.

Venture capital is also flooding into the software market at the moment. Price Waterhouse Cooper and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) recently released a MoneyTree report that found VC investments in the software industry amounted to $3.6 billion during the third quarter of 2013. It was the first time in 12 years that VC investments in the software sector exceeded $3 billion.

Rimini isn’t a startup, but it has dipped into the VC trough. Earlier this year, the company announced a $15 million round of financing with Bridge Bank. Rimini said it planned to use the money to expand its business.

Although it is still privately held, for years, Rimini has been reporting some quarterly financial figures. In late October, the company announced recognized revenue of $15.8 million and invoicing of $15.4 million. Both of those numbers, it says, were 40 percent higher than the equivalent metrics in 3Q12. The company–which operates on a subscription model–says it had deferred revenue of $46.5 million as of September 30, and in July said it had a sales bookings backlog of $753 million.

Here are some other Rimini numbers: It had nearly 350 employees in October, up from 300 in July; it has 660 total clients as of July 16, up from 600+ in April; and its customers include 75 of the Fortune 500.