Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith leads Qualtrics’ IPO as the team moves to

On Wednesday night, Ryan Smith, the new owner of Utah Jazz, celebrated his team’s tenth victory in a row, which catapulted the team into first place over the Los Angeles Lakers at the Western NBA Conference.

Then he woke up and rang the Nasdaq virtual bell.

Smith, 42, went public on his Qualtrics software company on Thursday, extracting it from SAP. It was a highly anticipated moment for Smith, who was about to lead Qualtrics through an IPO in late 2018, when SAP appeared at the last moment with an offer of $ 8 billion. Now the company is worth more than $ 27 billion.

The deal represents an unexpected fortune for Smith. He invested $ 120 million in the offer, buying 6 million shares for $ 20 each, which ended up being a 33% discount on the offer price. That stake is now valued at more than $ 273 million. Qualtrics jumped 52% to $ 45.50 on its first trading day.

2021 was a good start for Smith. A longtime jazz fan, Smith found himself faced with the unlikely opportunity to buy the team last year for $ 1.6 billion from the Miller family, who owned the franchise for 36 years. He had been sitting beside the court for years and was closely involved with the team, sponsoring the uniform patch with his Five for the Fight campaign to fund cancer research.

Jazz got off to a mediocre start when the season started last month, but the team is now 14-4 after beating the Dallas Mavericks by 12 points on Wednesday night, even with top scorer Donovan Mitchell out. Smith was present along with some fans, who had to remain socially distant because of Covid-19 restrictions. Viewers saw the Qualtrics logo spread across parts of the Vivint Arena in Salt Lake City.

After the game, Smith gave coach Quin Snyder the game ball for training his 500th game in the regular season.

“This is my night job,” Smith told CNBC in an interview on Thursday, before Qualtrics started operating. He acknowledged that, between basketball and business, “we had a good run”.

Smith is still the president of Qualtrics, but handed the title of CEO to Zig Serafin, who joined the company in 2016. Smith’s family owned 40% of Qualtrics when SAP bought it, making him a billionaire. Now he is ready for a second race. (SAP still owns more than 80% of its shares after the break up.)

Qualtrics develops cloud-based software that helps companies keep in touch with their customers, monitor how they use their products and make dynamic improvements based on data and analysis. The company increased its customer base to about 13,000 from 9,000 two years ago. Revenue rose more than 30% in the first three quarters of 2020 to $ 550 million, from $ 413.4 million in the same period last year.

A notable customer is the NBA – and that relationship predates Smith’s ownership of Jazz. According to the Qualtrics prospectus, the NBA uses technology to help design its digital tools in ways that engage fans and to “gain insight into the emotions and feelings of fans and the experience of NBA League Pass subscribers”.

Beginning last year, with the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent closure of the league, Qualtrics worked with the NBA to make its Orlando bubble a pleasant experience for viewers, as well as tracking players, employees and staff to ensure safety and security. Cheers.

“We are using Qualtrics a lot to help Covid’s testing and tracking,” said Smith.

– Alex Sherman from CNBC contributed to this report

TO SEE: CNBC interview with Qualtrics co-founder Ryan Smith and CEO Zig Serafin

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