Splunk, the company that specializes in big data analysis, announced the pricing of their initial public offering of 13,500,000 shares of common stock at a price to the public of $17.00 per share.  A total of 12,507,278 shares are being offered by Splunk while a total of 992,722 shares are being offered by selling stockholders.

Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and BofA Merrill Lynch are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering, and UBS Securities LLC, Pacific Crest Securities LLC and Cowen and Company LLC are acting as co-managers.  Splunk’s common stock will trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol “SPLK.”

Splunk granted underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 2,025,000 shares to cover over-allotments, if there are any.  Splunk will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares by the selling stockholders.

Splunk’s reported $121 million revenue in the fiscal year that ended in January was up 83% from the previous year, an exciting growth record for IPO investors.  The company originally planned to price their shares between $8 to $10, but raised the bar to somewhere between $11 and $13.

A report from the Wall Street Journal stated that Splunk’s IPO pricing may seem aggressive especially if you consider the fact that Splunk is unprofitable.  But given the company’s growth rate and the appeal of the technology and the firm, Splunk looks more and more like a great takeover target for large software companies.