Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Fidelity Continues Slashing Valuations Of Its Unicorns and Other Venture Investments:

From the Wall Street Journal:
Fidelity Investments again took a hatchet to the valuations of its private technology shares in February, cutting bellwether software startups like Dropbox Inc., Cloudera Inc. and Zenefits by as much as 38%.

On Wednesday the mutual fund giant posted valuation estimates as of Feb. 29 for the holdings in its various mutual funds. The reports are closely watched in Silicon Valley because they offer among the few public gauges for how startup values are trending.

Unlike its quarterly filings, Fidelity’s monthly reports don’t disclose the number of shares it holds in each company, only the total value of holdings. It is possible that valuation declines could be explained by share sales; however, Fidelity hasn’t typically sold any shares of its private tech holdings.
The Wall Street Journal last month published the Startup Stock Tracker, which keeps tabs of valuations posted by multiple mutual fund firms. The interactive has been updated to show February marks posted by Hartford Funds and Principal Funds in addition to Fidelity.

The largest Fidelity markdown was enterprise-software company Cloudera, which Fidelity cut by 38% compared with January to a per-share price that is in line with other mutual fund marks for the company.

Other big markdowns include business software company Domo Inc., down 29%, the first big decline for that company; Web storage firm Dropbox, down another 20% to a level that all but wipes out the gains on Fidelity’s 2012 investment in the company; and health-benefits broker Zenefits, down 25% and now 65% below Fidelity’s May 2015 purchase price. Electronic-document software firm DocuSign Inc. was reduced 34% compared with December, though Fidelity still shows a 170% paper gain....MORE