Procore IPO: S-1 Breakdown | Hacker News Reader

Procore IPO: S-1 Breakdown

meritechcapital.com

53 pointsdoppp14 comments

Procore is a construction tech "unicorn".

A helpful analysis of the S-1 can be found here: https://news.crunchbase.com/news/construction-tech-unicorn-p...

The summary:

> It revealed both increased revenue and net loss in 2019. Specifically, the company’s revenue surged 55 percent in 2019 to $289.2 million compared with $186.4 million in 2018. At the same time, its net loss was up by 46.5 percent to $83.1 million in 2019 compared to $56.7 million in 2018.

Procore is by far the best construction project management software I’ve used. All of the other ones have interface quirks, Gradebeam is particularly bad in this regard. I hope Procore succeeds, I enjoy using it as a subcontractor on a GC’s subscription.

A company with established product and customers, and high growth in recent years, but also not making a profit. It seems like maybe they are a bit late to do the S-1? This might have been more welcome a year ago. But, what do I know, I am not a stock person. It will be interesting to see what happens, in order to see if the post-WeWork IPO market actually is all that different.

Alex Clayton's breakdowns always good and a little more digestible: https://www.meritechcapital.com/blog/procore-ipo-s-1-breakdo...

Ok, let's give that a try. Changed from https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1611052/000119312520.... Thanks!

Please just remember that you should always read the entire prospectus, verbatim from the SEC, if you want to really understand what's going on. Not just someone else's analysis, and definitely not the "investor summary" or God forbid the slide deck prepared by the securities seller (the company). Bottom-to-top reading is a useful strategy because there's usually some bad and relevant stuff hidden close to the end.

It's an adversarial game where you (the buyer) want to pay as little as possible, the company (the seller) wants as much as possible, and the SEC (the regulator) is the neutral arbiter of information. Any third party's intention is unknown unless they publish their full portfolio.

Maybe the best way is to leave the official S-1 up and people can post links to analyses in the threads. i.e. maybe we shouldn't do what I just did.

Please keep linking both official and in-depth analysis. two different consumers of the data.

Well, we can only have one link at the top of any given submission, and it is best not to have two threads on the same topic, so the question remains which link should win?

The SEC link should win and people can offer compelling analysis / summary links in the comments. The SEC filing is the official resource and will be a superset of what's discussed / focused on in any given 3rd party commentary

I agree, let's uphold the spirit of the Securities Act of 1933 introduced after the 1929 crash - the SEC is the arbiter of data. Anything that's in the SEC database is "sacred" and someone (whoever wrote it) can go to jail if it's in fact not true but has been manipulated.

>, and it is best not to have two threads on the same topic, so the question remains which link should win?

I think the analysis by Meritech Capital should win because inside that article, the first sentence already has a direct link to the official SEC S-1 anyway.

For HN audience, it's easier to read the much shorter (even if flawed) Meritech Capital blog post and comment on that -- rather than read then entire S-1 prospectus (~100,000 words!). Those that want to dive into the lengthy S-1 can still do so; the link is conveniently in the first sentence.

It's an HN tradition to link to the S-1.

This is not the post I upvoted, and I can no longer undo that action. The replacement changed my upvote history to an unwanted version.

I would also disagree with the second part of your statement -- I've never understood why two threads on the same 'topic' is in any way harmful.

> I've never understood why two threads on the same 'topic' is in any way harmful.

Speaking for myself (but probably many others as well)... it's a problem when they both reach the front page of HN.

There's a finite # of slots (30) and I'd rather see 30 different topics rather than 29 because 2 of them are about Procore S-1. And suggesting folks to just click "More" to see page 2 of topics 31-60 doesn't really solve anything because now I only see 59 topics because 2 are dupes rather 60.

When Facebook's Libra got introduced, the front page had ~4 simultaneous threads about it. A few of them thankfully got merged.

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