Nuix could lock in a price for its initial public offering as early as next week, with the software company believed to be working on a cornerstone process with prospective investors.
Next week, the company will also release analyst research that offers insight into the valuation of the company, which will coincide with a management roadshow.
Nuix is expected to list in the first week of December.
The company has so far proved to be attractive to institutional investors, subject to price, and now looks almost certain to be heading for a float through Morgan Stanley and Macquarie Capital rather than a trade sale, despite earlier buyer interest.
This comes as technology stocks remain in favour in the equities market amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier, private equity firms, including Kohlberg Kravis Robert, TPG Capital, Hellman and Friedman, Apax Partners and Vista Equity Partners had been looking at the business.
The global investigative analytics and intelligence software company, which is part-owned by Macquarie, is understood to generate $176m of annual revenue.
Expectations have been that Nuix will be looking for a price that equates to about 10 times its revenue.
Nuix has been earmarked for a listing before, in 2016, when it was slated to head to the market as a company worth at least $1bn.
It has grown organically to having more than 1000 clients in 79 countries after it was started in 2000 by a group of computer scientists.
The company and its advisers are expected to promote its long-term relationships with high-profile government and law enforcement agencies, large enterprises, advisory and law firms.
Also expected to be talked up is its attraction at a time that a growing amount of data is being created and stored, there is an increased focus on governance, risk and compliance functions and more significant consequences associated with data privacy breaches.
With a profit margin of more than 85 per cent in 2020, the business is both earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation positive and cash flow positive.
Nuix’s revenue is growing at about 16 per cent annually since 2018.
The company developed its first use case with the Australian government in 2006.
Among its contracts are some with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the group’s services have been used in the Panama Papers tax investigation.
It has a software platform for indexing, searching, analysing and extracting knowledge from unstructured data.
Applications include digital investigation, cybersecurity, e-discovery, information governance and email migration and privacy.
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