Yesterday, Apple Enterprise Management juggernaut Jamf celebrated its initial public offering. For eighteen years, Jamf has been at the forefront of Apple Mobile Device Management, and the Minneapolis firm now helps over 40,000 organizations to harness the power of Apple to help run their businesses. Just a week or so ago, Jamf officially announced the launch of its initial public offering, taking a huge step by becoming a publicly-listed company.
As the gleeful faces of Jamf's team lit up Times Square in New York (pictured), the opening bell was rung, and Jamf's shares were traded publicly for the first time ever. A roaring success, Jamf's IPO was upsized earlier this week to a public offering of 18,000,000 shares, with a common stock price of $26. By the close of play yesterday, those shares had soared by more than 50%, a great first day by anyone's standards.
As Jamf celebrated this huge step in the company's history, we caught up with Jamf's Chief Technology Officer, Jason Wudi, to find out just what this IPO means to the company.
Q. Can you tell us about Jamf's decision to go public, the timing and so on...? How big of a milestone is this for the company, and what does it mean to Jamf?
Jason: Our IPO has been in the works for many months and is a major milestone for our company. As a long-time Jamf employee, it's incredible to see the company I have gotten to grow with take this step. We started out in 2002 with the sole mission of helping organizations succeed with Apple – a mission that has not changed in 18 years. Today, we are the standard in Apple Enterprise Management, and as a result of our focus, we serve 40,000 customers supporting 17 million devices and get to be part of and learn from the world's largest Apple IT community, Jamf Nation, which is 100k+ members strong.
Though it's a big step for the company that our entire team is pumped about, what we're most excited about today is that going public will give us capital to continue to best serve our customers and innovate in Apple Enterprise Management. It gives us an opportunity to be there for our customers and help them succeed with Apple long into the future. We are still Jamf, and our commitment to the tightest community in all of high tech, Jamf Nation, is unwavering. Public companies don't have an expiration date. As long as we perform, we can continue to be Jamf and support Jamf Nation forever.
Q. What kind of trends do you see in the industry going forward, and how can Jamf capitalize on them?
Jason: Apple is only going to continue to grow in the enterprise. Millennials and Generation Z, who make up the largest segment of today's workforce, continue to demand Apple and want to use the same technology at work that they use at home. Organizations offering employee choice programs are also fueling market growth, as according to a recent survey, more than 70% of employees surveyed worldwide would choose Mac over PC and iOS over Android. We believe there is a gap between employees who want to use Apple and those who currently do.
And, that demand isn't slowing down when you look outside the enterprise. COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of what was once visionary as now required solutions to empower remote work, distance learning and telehealth. Providers are using iPads to facilitate virtual inpatient care, serve patients at home and connect isolated patients with loved ones. Many schools have or are providing iPads to all their students in order to deliver equitable and engaging at-home learning experiences. And businesses are needing to shift to zero-touch deployment and empower seamless connection to resources in the cloud, as well as remotely onboard new employees.
Jamf has always been about filling the gap between what Apple builds and the enterprise requires in terms of security, access and deployment. Apple focuses on the person, and we focus on the people. Because of this, we believe we are very early in our story and growth cycle.
Q. Going public during a global pandemic is a new one. Has COVID-19 thrown up any unexpected complications to going public? And how has COVID-19 changed and impacted Jamf, its customers, and digital tech on the "front line" of IT?
Jason It is a unique, unprecedented time, absolutely. I first want to give a shout out to the amazing stars of IT - inside of Jamf, and in organizations around the world - they are rockstars that have been powering much of the digital transformation behind the scenes of every distance learning, telehealth, and remote work initiative.
COVID-19 has been a risk to ALL businesses, but as a whole, Jamf's business has been relatively unaffected. COVID has accelerated the world's acceptance and dependence on remote and virtual interactions, something that we're uniquely positioned to power. After moving our entire global workforce of over 1300 to remote within 24 hours, we've just been staying focused on helping our education customers succeed with distance learning, our enterprise customers keep their remote workers productive and happy, and stepping into power telehealth initiatives for our healthcare customers in need. I'm so proud of our team and Jamf's ability to use our talent to help solve immediate pain points customers have experienced from this pandemic, and stay on top of providing the best experience for their end-users.
Since inception, our focus has been to help organizations succeed with Apple and put the customer at the center of everything we do. As a result, Jamf is (and always has been) uniquely positioned to empower businesses, schools, healthcare organizations, and more to seamlessly transition to new ways of working. Unlike other businesses that have managed through this by layoffs, furloughs, and salary freezes, we're continuing to invest and hire, which allows us to remain focused on helping our customers through this distressing time. We're seeing that our solutions, particularly in the areas of empowering remote work, telehealth and distance learning, have an increase in demand.
Q. Your IPO valuation was as high as $2.68 billion, that must be pretty exciting?
Jason: The ability to share in today's IPO with the entire Jamf team, our customers who are empowering their end-users, and the whole of the Jamf Nation community is rewarding - and of course for all of us to get validation that what we have been working to accomplish and the way we have done it is important to the public markets is awesome! Just like a number of milestones in my time at Jamf, this represents another beginning, and we are extremely fortunate to embark on this journey with the great team and advisors that have helped us get to today!
Q. Does Jamf have anything exciting planned over the next few months?
Jason: Our annual Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC) is taking place at the end of September, and like many other events this year, it is going to be a virtual event. While it saddens us that we won't be able to see and interact with our customers, partners and entire Jamf Nation community face to face, we are excited by the opportunity to invite more people to participate (the conference is free to register!), and we will all learn together how to move forward in helping organizations succeed with Apple!
A huge congratulations to everyone at Jamf on yesterday's achievement.
