Carbon Black has filed for an initial public offering (IPO), revealing that revenue at the endpoint security software company reached $162 million in 2017, up from $116.2 million in 2016 and $70.6 million in 2015. That's a 51 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR).That revenue growth involves a "high-leverage channel model." Indeed, 94 percent of Carbon Black's new or add-on business for the three months ended December 31, 2017, involved channel partners. Those partners include MSSPs and security-focused VARs, the company notes.Key relationships also span more than 100 incident response firms, including Kroll and Ernst & Young, along with strategic relationships with IBM and VMware, the company adds. Dig a little deeper into the IPO filing, and the company mentions key relationships with Optiv Security Inc. (as a VAR-MSSP); CDW Corp. (software VAR); Arrow Electronics (global distributor); SecureWorks (MSSP).
Carbon Black Losses, Security Opportunities
Still, Carbon Black's pursuit of growth has triggered growing annual losses. Indeed, net losses reached $55.8 million in 2017, up from a $38.7 million net loss in 2015.Among the bright spots for the company: Recurring revenues now represent 88 percent of total revenues, up from 77 percent in 2015, the company revealed. Still, it's not a pure cloud services story. Only about 18 percent of Carbon Black's total recurring revenue involved cloud services in 2017 -- though that's up from essentially nothing in 2015.Carbon Black points to the following 10 use-cases for its security products:- Augment or replace legacy antivirus software;
- Prevent malware and fileless attacks that do not use malware;
- Protect against ransomware;
- Hunt down threats;
- Respond to and remediate security incidents;
- Lock down critical systems and applications;
- Protect fixed-function devices;
- Secure workloads and applications in virtualized and cloud environments;
- Comply with regulatory mandates; and
- Enhance other security products through our unfiltered endpoint data.
