Stock has seen astonishing 66% rise, since IPO on June 5.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Arista Networks – the Santa Clara-based cloud services company that is headed up by President and CEO Jayashree Ullal – is having a stellar summer so far, with the company’s stock prices far exceeding expectations.
The company, which had its Initial Public Offering (IPO) on June 5, as seen its stock price go up from $43 per share, to $65.50 as of around noon on Thursday. What’s more, the stock closed at $71.50 at the end of trading on Monday, which is an astonishing 66% increase over the price of the stock at its IPO just a couple of weeks earlier.
That’s big news for a company that wasn’t expected to be trading at anywhere higher than $40 per share. At the time of its IPO, the company’s $43 share price put its valuation at over $225 million, but that number has increased significantly in the wake of Arista’s stunning public success – which, as it turns out, goes completely against what most industry analysts have been predicting for cloud service companies.
Much of that success should be credited to Ullal, who has smartly steered the company into becoming a major player in Silicon Valley. Born in London but raised in New Delhi, Ullal came to San Francisco State University for her B.S. in electrical engineering, followed by her master’s degree in engineering management from Santa Clara University. After spending some time working for companies like AMD and Cisco, she was hired by Arista co-founders Andy Bechtolsheim and David Cheriton to her current position in 2008.
Now, less than six years later, the company is a direct competitor of big-name cloud networking firms like HP Networking, Avaya, Dell, Cisco, and Juniper Networks, among others. Much of Arista’s success can be attributed to its proprietary Extensible Operating System (EOS), which is the cornerstone of its networking systems.
Arista’s success is not being taken lightly by its contemporaries within the field, as others are noticing how the company is bucking trends and defying the odds on its thus-far steady rise towards the top.
On Monday, Arista announced that it was selected to join AVnu Alliance, an “industry consortium that certifies Audio Video Bridging (AVB) products for interoperability,” according to a press release. By becoming a member of AVnu Alliance, Arista will able to complete its goal of standardizing audio-video and media output with “flexibility, precision, visibility and price point” throughout its AV networks. The company will also help maintain and elevate standards throughout the industry.
“Arista is thrilled to become a member of AVnu Alliance, the only organization that is driving open, standards-based AV networking via Ethernet,” said Vice-President of Business Development and Alliances for Arista, Ed Chapman. “Arista’s Extensible Operating System (EOS) implementation of AVB delivers a next generation solution for the audio video industry with the performance and cost of Ethernet economics.”