Blog - Practical Venture Capital

PVC SaaS Index™ | Q1 2023 – SaaS Companies Are Now a Bargain vs. S&P 500

Aman Verjee

03.29.23

IPO
Public Markets
PVC SaaS Index
SaaS
Valuation

Practical Summary: This post is an update in a quarterly series of posts that tracks the PVC SaaS Index™, a basket of publicly traded US-listed SaaS companies. Background: SaaS Multiples in Public Markets Software as a Service (“SaaS”) has been around longer than the cool new cloud. The SaaS category shares some aspects of cloud computing, but

The Year of Efficiency: Much Needed in Silicon Valley

Aman Verjee

03.07.23

Silicon Valley
Tech

In the past few weeks, many tech firms have announced layoffs and it’s been making headlines. According to Layoffs.FYI, tech companies announced 260,000 layoffs between 2022 and 2023, with a few of the larger announcements coming from these companies: On the face of it, such numbers might sound like grim news, but the reality is

PVC SaaS Index™ | Q4 2022 – Where Will SaaS Multiples Bottom Out?

Aman Verjee

10.19.22

IPO
Public Markets
PVC SaaS Index
Valuation

Practical Summary: Companies in our PVC SaaS Index™ now trade at an average 6.8x EV / LTM revenue, slightly down from the 7.6x multiple observed at the end of Q2 2022. SaaS multiples now trade at levels that haven’t been seen since the 2016 “SaaS crash.” Valuations today have just about normalized. Ignoring the 2020/2021

PVC SaaS Index™ | Q2 2022 – SaaS Multiples Are at a 4-Year Low: Where Do They Go From Here?

Aman Verjee

05.18.22

Downturn
IPO
Public Markets
PVC SaaS Index
SaaS

Practical Summary: Our PVC SaaS Index™ companies trade at just over 8x EV / LTM revenue, lower than at any time since the Q1 2020 market panic that followed the onset of the COVID pandemic. They are trading around where SaaS multiples were in 2017-2018. The median company multiple in our index is down 54%

How Netflix Lost the Squid Game

Aman Verjee

04.22.22

Public Markets

NFLX now appears to have shifted from playing “at home” on technology against cable television and Blockbuster into a war over content and pricing against Disney and HBO, where they are definitely the “visitors.” Don’t expect a turnaround in the stock until they figure out monetization of freeloaders and ad-supported plans … all of which is still a long way off.

PVC SaaS Index™ | Q1 2022 Update

Aman Verjee

03.29.22

Public Markets
PVC SaaS Index
SaaS
Valuation

Our PVC SaaS Index™ companies trade at 11x EV / LTM revenues, well within the historical range of 7-12x where SaaS has traded for most of the past 10 years.The median SaaS multiple has compressed by nearly 40% from where it peaked in late 2021, at 18x.