There is very little reasoning to who was laid off. Many who haven’t performed are still there. The roles affected are senior mid and entry. It seems like a rush to meet profitability for a quick acquisition. Can they IPO? Current customers aren’t excited about the solutions. Many companies want open source or newer solutions.
Very well said.
OldSASser, the most obvious is to not repeat the Broadcom failure and successfully sell the company by having their financials in order for public facing. I think the IPO itself serves multiple fronts, and none will actually benefit the employees.
To the original question, "Can they IPO?", all that's required are assets with a value greater than zero. SAS has a $3B revenue stream, real estate in a separate company, a JMP subsidiary, and no debt. Those assets are worth much more than zero.
But to the question, "Will they IPO?", most of you clearly believe they will not.
I've been out of SAS for some years, so you may know more. If you don't believe the IPO will happen, what do you think will happen instead?
Please stop with the IPO delusion. That's all it is, a delusion. Most likely, GN was getting flak from all his worried 'dependents', related or not. "What happens to us when the inevitable happens, daddy?"
Tired of the flak, he came up with the IPO nonsense to run the clock and get them off his back. See the concept of 'future-faking', where someone tells you what you want to hear to get you off your back, but they never follow through. "Oh yeah, I'll do XYZ next week." Next week comes and goes, and XYZ hasn't been completed. GN isn't some god, contrary to what he may have lead others to believe. This IPO charade is simply 'theater' to cover up for a failing business.
GN had plenty of opportunities to sell the company decades ago when it was still worth something. Other technologies have bridged that gap, and now the intellectual property value is approaching zero. There is no 'magic formula' when it comes to Statistics and machine learning. The world is doing research, thriving, and moving forward in other technologies that are not SAS.
Long ago, SAS once had some great intellectual property. But now, common people, such as myself, can program similar functions in Python for free. Python takes a little bit of time to learn, but it's not hard. New Python libraries and statistical functions are being updated and released continually - for free. Why would other companies continue to pay SAS subscription fees when they can get the same functionality in Python? You don't even need R any longer.
Please stop with this magical thinking that SAS has some coherent plan and strategy and is infallible. Perhaps it was for some time, but that's no longer the case. Snap out of it, people; break the spell.
It's unusual for a mature company to IPO, but there's no reason SAS can't. Wall Street has plenty of people who can value the company and calculate a price for the stock.
A private buyer would calculate a similar price. An IPO involves more buyers, which may be to SAS' advantage.
Unfortunately, layoffs make the company more attractive, either way.
I saw the same disconnect from reality as the previous poster. It's human nature to resist change. People don't want to believe it's happening, when it is.
I left SAS last year. It blows my mind that current employees still think there will be an IPO. It was a farce from the very beginning in lieu of selling the company after finding the highest paying buyer after the Broadcom failed deal (which was on purpose). Dr G would never want to go public with SAS very well knowing the lackluster demand of SAS products in the industry and revenue declining/flatlined since 2014. Public markets would have crushed SAS valuation to more than half on just that piece of information never mind the investors would put money on future/open source tech rather than a legacy software closed source licensing company.
Every time I traveled to Cary campus, I felt how disconnected some of the Cary employees (R&D, Sales) to the reality out there, almost like a cult of believers or irrational staunch loyalists of SAS ignoring fundamentals, business direction, CEO age, no successor, no equity plan, economic environment or any other facts.
I came to SAS from a bank and went back to banking after leaving SAS. During the first week of my new role I had an opportunity to meet the Chief Data officer of the bank, and we talked about the analytical capabilities, platforms bank was using and considering like Snowflake, Databricks etc. When I mentioned about any consideration for SAS platform? he smiled at me and said “you’re joking right” and then I said “yes smiling back”. This is the general perception of SAS in the financial services industry atleast here in US.
Get out of this sinking ship while you can, before big G sells it to a PE or another firm like Broadcom with an aggressive CEO like Hock Tan. They would cut the workforce in half within few days of an acquisition, and frankly that’s the least they can do with so much deadweight SAS already has.
There are many low performers there who have political cover (aka 'friends of the family'). They survive these layoffs because of that. Those without political cover are most likely the ones targeted.
Hopefully, SAS is being more honest about its dying status and not scapegoating those who are laid off.
And for those waiting for an IPO, IPO's are for growing companies. This is a dying company. An IPO would be worthless. The value of SAS is in its real property, which may belong to a family company outside of SAS. Don't be deluded by internal IPO talk; it's nonsense.
For people laid off, the hardest point to understand is that it does not relate to performance. Everyone naturally thinks that it should. But it never does.
This layoff relates to profitability and the IPO. There is logic, at a high level; but not at the level of individual employees.
I've been laid off twice. It's a fact of life in our industry. It hurts; you get angry. But the sooner you realize it has nothing to do with you, the healthier you'll be, and the better able to find your next job.
I quoted @7zpl+1lrI4cfr