SÃO PAULO, Brazil - Globant, an Argentine software and information technology services company, has filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange, in a move to broaden its reach.
In a filing late Tuesday night with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the firm said it sought to raise $86.25 million, although that amount is just a placeholder for registration purposes. The lead underwriters listed are JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, William Blair and Loyal3 Securities.
The company’s investors include the New York-based private equity fund Riverwood Capital, FTVentures, the British advertising giant WPP and Endeavor Global, a New York-based nonprofit organization that seeks to foster entrepreneurship in developing countries.
Globant would be the first technology company from Argentina to be listed on the N.Y.S.E., according to a spokeswoman at the exchange. The Big Board has 80 companies from Latin America listed, 14 from Argentina.
Globant, though now incorporated in Luxembourg, was founded in 2003 in Buenos Aires, where it maintains its principal operating subsidiary. More than 2,200 of its 2,867 employees in Argentina, according to the filing.
The four founders, who studied engineering at Argentine public universities, initially formed the company to tap into the lucrative offshoring sector that India was dominating at the time. Argentina’s economy had collapsed in 2001 in the world’s largest sovereign default, and a resulting sharp devaluation in 2002 made the country competitive and stimulated exports.
The company has focused on developing software for the gaming, mobile and cloud computing sectors, and has tried to blend the approach of an advertising agency, one of Argentina’s strengths, with computer programming.
Clients include Google, LinkedIn, Orbitz and Coca-Cola. North American clients accounted for 82.1 percent of its revenue in the first half of this year. In that period, it had $71.7 million in revenue, up from $56.9 million during the first half of 2012.
In the first half of 2013, Globant posted a net profit of $8.0 million, recovering from a loss of $5.1 million
in the same period last year.
Risks detailed in the filing include an increased employee attrition rate, as well as Argentina’s deteriorating macroeconomic picture.
Globant’s founders have challenged the old way of doing business in the country, where family wealth and political connections often dictated who started companies.
They have also done something atypical in Argentina - acquired smaller companies as part of their business growth plans. During the 1990s, when the Argentine peso was pegged to the dollar, companies often sold themselves to foreigners, rather than leverage the currency advantage and expand throughout Latin America.
Globant’s founders have sought to do the opposite. In a 2008 New York Times article, Alejandro Mashad, then managing director of Endeavor Argentina, said that, “Globant’s four founders could sell their company today and each have a private jet, but they want to build a company in Argentina.â€
