Australia’s biggest ever global float: Atlassian worth US$5.8bn

1

blog Great news from the US, where Australian software firm Atlassian has at long last started selling its shares on the NASDAQ, under the ticker TEAM. The Guardian reports that the share price of the company has already soared on its first day. The share sale apparently represents Australia’s biggest ever share float on the international market. The Guardian reports (we recommend you click here for the full article):

“Hitting the boards on Thursday in New York under the code name TEAM, the stock debuted at US$27.67 (A$38.10), up from the US$S21 premium investors paid during the company’s initial public offering (IPO).

It reached a peak of US$28.50 before settling to trade strongly around $US27 throughout the session, eventually closing at US$27.78, up 32%.”

Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar posted the following message on the company’s blog:

“Today is a big day for Atlassian. A few minutes ago, we became a publicly traded company. Mike and I had the honor of ringing the NASDAQ opening bell, and we can think of no better way to celebrate than to recognize the work of our customers around the world and their teams that helped make all this possible.

We chose the ticker symbol TEAM because our mission is to unleash the potential of every team. We believe all human advancement is driven by teamwork. And while it’s common to celebrate the lone genius behind a breakthrough, it’s a team that brings their ideas to life.

We want to thank the teams in the 50,000 organizations in 160 countries that rely on our products. You amaze us with the way you use Atlassian software to achieve great things – be it the engineering teams at Cochlear who use Atlassian to create aural implants, the operations teams at Code.org who use HipChat to coordinate with volunteer engineers around the globe, or the IT teams at Daily Telegraph who use Atlassian to enable a daily newspaper to go to print for over two million readers.

So today, we invite you to show off your team’s accomplishments.

Share your victories on Twitter with hashtag #goTEAM and show the world what your team is doing with the help of Atlassian products. (A simple “My team uses @Atlassian to…” works great.) We’ll be sending our favorite #goTEAM tweets to NASDAQ’s jumbotron on Times Square as a way to shine a light on your achievements. A seven-story, 84-foot-wide light to be exact.

Whether you’re unlocking the mysteries of the universe, building the next big thing, or simply helping your team work smarter, you inspire us. Thank you for making us a part of your team.”

While there have been many opinions over the years about Atlassian’s IPO and how it should be conducted, I think it’s safe to say that today marks a landmark day in the book of any Australian technologist. What the listing shows is that if you have a strong work ethic, a great idea (or a few!) and maybe a little pinch of luck, you can truly make it on the world stage.

The sky is the limit for Atlassian from here — it’ll be fascinating to see how far it can go :) Congrats!

Image credit: Atlassian

1 COMMENT

  1. Brilliant effort team Atlassian.

    With a claimed over 100 Atlassian employees now millionaires or multi-millionaires, on paper, after the float and subsequent share price rise, hopefully that empowers a few more voices to provide some forthright and visionary advice to those with the privilege and responsibility of guiding and overseeing Australia’s telecommunications infrastructure and digital economy through this challenging stage of development and evolution.

Comments are closed.