This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Cohesity is getting ready for Wall Street. CEO Sanjay Poonen told CNBC the data security firm could go public in 2026, once it has a full year of results from its merger with Veritas’ data protection arm. That deal, completed in December 2024, created the industry’s largest player with 19% market share and a valuation of just over $7 billion.
The company, backed by Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), had weighed going public earlier but held back. I made a calculation in 2022 that we could go public, but in the midst of all of these companies, we’d be a smaller fish, Poonen said. We wanted to be the biggest fish, have the biggest market share, and then go public. With Cohesity’s fiscal year ending in August, that points to a potential listing in fall 2026.
Cohesity is measuring itself against Rubrik (NYSE:RBRK), which went public in April 2024 and is valued around $17 billion. Rubrik trades at 12.75 times sales versus 7.16 for smaller peer Commvault. If Cohesity delivers, Poonen believes it deserves a comparable or superior valuation, more than doubling its value since the Veritas tie-up.