Salesforce's Irish staff in line for IPO windfall

Irish staff working at the European headquarters of the US firm Salesforce.com will benefit from windfall bonuses if the company succeeds in raising $115 million (€92.9 million) from an initial public offering (IPO).The firm, which employs 45 people in Dublin, filed registration documents yesterday with the Securities & Exchange Commission for the public offering.

The Salesforce.com flotation will be a crucial test to measure the appetite for technology offerings following several years of market weakness. It is expected that other firms, including search engine Google, could file registrations for IPOs shortly.

Most staff at the firm's Dublin office are members of Salesforce.com's employee stock option plan and will be able to cash in their shares following a flotation.

Irish directors of Salesforce.com's European operation in Dublin also stand to benefit from a successful flotation.

Accounts filed with the Companies Registration Office in Dublin show that Mr Fergus Gloster, Mr David Dempsey and Mr John Appelby (who recently left the firm) owned almost one million shares in the US firm in February 2002.

These Irish-born directors all left Oracle to found the European headquarters for Salesforce.com just as the technology market collapsed. But the firm's cut-price model of renting customer relationship management software using the Web has proved popular in the economic downturn.

Salesforce.com's registration filings show the firm generated revenues of $66 million and net income of $4.7 million in the nine months to the end of October. An IPO share price has not yet been set but the offering is expected to raise up to $115 million.

Salesforce.com recently sub-let a new office building from Trintech and is likely to expand its European operations if the public flotation is successful. Its European operations generated $7.9 million in the nine months to the end of October 2003, according to the IPO filing.

Since Salesforce.com set up its service in February 2000, its customer base has grown to about 8,000 customers, with an aggregate of more than 110,000 paying subscribers in 70 countries.