The IPO market is expected to return next year and some well-known companies like Klarna, Chime and StubHub are expected to list their shares. Just don’t expect Justworks, the HR software startup, to be one of them.
The company tried to go public back in 2022. Justworks was one of the first to launch its roadshow that year, just weeks after a record setting period for the IPO market.
In 2021, nearly 400 companies went public using an IPO, one of the most active years for new issues. Technology companies like Rivian and Robinhood delivered some of the biggest offerings of 2021, but then tech IPOs got put on ice in 2022 as investors began turning away from growth companies. The advent of inflation, climbing interest rates and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine helped cast a chilling effect on new issues.
Justworks, which was chasing a $2 billion valuation, decided to keep its IPO registration statement alive during the first half of 2022. It eventually pulled the offering that July, a major sign that the door for new issues had slammed shut. The IPO market has yet to rebound.
Justworks, in hindsight, likely caught a break when it failed to get the IPO off the ground. A majority of the 400 companies that listed in 2021 remain below their offer price. "It was tough to pull the IPO after all the work we’d put in, and I don’t know what it would have been like if we had proceeded, but as the months went on, we (and our employees and our investors) definitely felt we had made the right decision,” said CEO Michael Seckler in a email to Fortune.
Founded in 2012, Justworks provides HR software and services to over 12,000 small businesses, up from 8,000 customers in 2021. The company employs 1,500 people, mainly in New York. This year, Justworks is on track to hit $350 million in revenue (or “annual contribution profit” in Seckler’s lingo) up from about $140 million in 2022. Its biggest competitors are ADP and Paychex.
Justworks was profitable from 2020 to mid-2023 but is now focused on product development and growth. The startup spent $100 million on R&D this year, up 6.4 times from 2022, said Seckler. It has acquired two companies, VIA and Boomr, since 2020 but is largely focused on growing organically, he said.
Much of its strategy focuses on the millions of small businesses in the U.S. and internationally that are either fully remote or follow a hybrid model. Justworks provides the software and services that make it seamless for these businesses to manage their workforces across state and international lines, said Seckler, who spoke to Fortune from the company's offices in Manhattan.
There’s also room to grow. Justworks estimates that U.S. small businesses employed about 67 million people in 2022, according to an analysis of U.S. census data. Justworks’s 12,000 small business clients represent just 170,000 employees, a fraction of this market.
“We still serve much less than 1% of the roughly 67 million total employees who work at U.S.-based businesses with less than 100 employees. This is our target market... and it is massive!” Seckler said in an email.
He predicted that A.I. would be a “massive driver of change for employers and businesses.” The technology is already having a big impact at Justworks. The technology allows Justworks to provide higher levels of customer service while freeing up its teams to focus on complex edge cases, Seckler said.
No Pressure
Justworks will eventually go public, but Seckler refused to pin down when that might happen. “Our time will come. We are focused on building a generational business,” he said.
There’s also no pressure on Justworks to join the pipeline of companies looking to list, Seckler said. He pointed to ServiceTitan, a provider of business management software for the trade industry, which is scheduled to price later Wednesday and trade Thursday, Dec. 12.
ServiceTitan agreed to a compounding IPO ratchet structure when it raised $365 million in a Series H round in November 2022. The structure means that, when ServiceTitan does list, if its share price is below what the Series H investors paid, or $84.57, then the investors will receive more shares, according to an analysis by Meritech Capital. The upshot is that the company needs to go public as soon as possible to minimize the dilutive impact of its rachet structure.
ServiceTitan also missed a May 22 deadline to go public, and every quarter past this date means the hurdle price compounds annually. The hurdle price is currently around $90 but ServiceTitan is expected to sell stock at the much lower range of $65 to $67 a share. This means that the company would have to issue even more shares to its investors.
Many tech companies choose ratchet structures because it allows them to secure a high valuation and avoid the embarrassment of a down round, Seckler said. This compares to Justworks which has raised $143 million of “plain vanilla VC dollars,” he said.
Justworks doesn’t have any plans to raise more money or list its shares anytime soon, Seckler said. “We go when we want to. It’s an important place to be,” he said.
