https://www.cio.com/article/3988330/sas-enters-new-ai-era-with-ipo-on-the-horizon.html
Company had to consolidate 14 financial systems, which took several years; that new system went live in January 2025. SAS also had to build other systems necessary for public companies, and those went into production at the beginning of May.
“We’ll need to run on that for at least a year before we’re ready,” he said, so the IPO may happen next year, although it’s more likely to occur in 2027.
My alma mater lists the software packages available to students. JMP was in there, as was SAS. JMP was free. SAS was $180.
The SAS listing included a listing of packages and applications. Enterprise Miner, SAS OR, Proc SQL, SAS Graph, among other things. There were about 15 items in the list. I don't remember if Viya was in there. The products I worked on weren't.
Aside from well-known applications, the rest appeared to be libraries. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. I never used SAS beyond proc glm, and that was long ago.
But then it struck me -- if things like "SAS Graph" are comparable to "ggplot2" in R, then using SAS has no appeal whatsoever. The presence on the software list didn't seem like growth and progress for SAS, but more of a cash grab from die-hard old-timers; It was sad.
@14c Alteryx and QlikTech sold for nearly 5X revenues, so $15B is not unreasonable to ask. Whether SAS is worth that is a matter of opinion.
It was not reported that Broadcom offered $15-20B — only that it was discussed. It may have been SAS's asking price. I guess if anyone offered that, SAS would have sold.
https://www.constellationr.com/blog-news/insights/alteryx-goes-private-44-billion-deal-what-watch-next
https://www.datanami.com/2016/06/02/rise-fall-qlik
What’s comparable is that neither line of products is growing.
That's the likely reason no buyer made an acceptable offer, to either JNJ or SAS. Buyers prefer growth.
Without a buyer, SAS will IPO, for the same reason as JNJ: it’s their best exit strategy.
Four years ago Broadcom reportedly offered $15 billion-$20 billion. Is the declining V9 revenue stream is worth less now than it was 4 years ago? Has anything grown enough at SAS to offset that declining revenue from V9? Or is the V9 revenue stream not declining like speculated?
So that begs the question: is SAS still worth 15 - 20 billion?
not comparable at all. toilet paper, shampoo, band-aid, tylenol, etc., are all recession proof. they are not a legacy tech company disrupted by cloud, open source, AI, etc.
Consider Kenvue, a collection of products including Band-Aid, Listerine, and Tylenol. Johnson & Johnson wanted to sell these products, because they were growing slowly, or not at all.
In 2023, JNJ IPO’d a 10% share of KVUE. Over the next year, they divested the remaining 90%.
If any private buyer had offered a sweet price, JNJ would have taken it. But they decided that an IPO was their best exit strategy.
SAS is like Johnson & Johnson. They own a collection of products that are growing slowly, or not at all.
If any private buyer offers a sweet price, SAS will take it. But otherwise, SAS will do like Johnson & Johnson: they’ll IPO a partial share, then gradually implement their exit strategy.
My guess is this: using the IPO to float a few percents of SAS, let say 5%, and use this market valuation to value the other 95% of the company.
SAS will never IPO. This is all about positioning the company for a sale.
lol I think these are just trying to ELI5 for the biz press. it is true that LLM is "only" word prediction in some sense. on the opposite extreme, sam altman says deep learning can "learn everything". So which is it? Is the truth in between? If so, are there great opportunities for legacy software vendors in that liminal space? "Your mission if you choose to accept it ..."
What a great article and interview with JG! I didn't know my home thermostat was Agentic AI, or that AI was simply a neural network with a bunch of term probability calculations and if/then statements. The way he simplified all the operations to the lowest common denominator really blew my mind!
I'm no longer worried about my future, with his reassuring words on the quality of AI programming agents. Only as good as my first program (after graduating with a degree in CS). Hello World, indeed!
JG, thank you so much for providing that interview. You have renewed my faith in SAS ahead of the theoretical IPO. I can now invest elsewhere, or short, with confidence!
"Does anyone believe that an IPO is the best option for JG?"
Only if JG retains 51 percent or more control. And given flat revenue for a decade, doubtful that looks good for anyone except JG.
Does anyone believe that an IPO is the best option for JG? https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/28/salesforce-crm-q1-earnings-report-2026.html
Did they rewrite SAS Financial Management, or go with a mainstream system that others use?
Lucy van Pelt moves the ball yet again.
Lack of urgency may also because there doesn't seem to be any real "need", at least that commenters on this site know about. OpenAI also might or might not go public. Doesn't seem to be affecting its access to capital or other resources to pursue new opportunities. Already left and will likely retire before SAS goes IPO (if it ever does), but hoping if the company does do it, it's to raise a lot of capital to then pursue lucrative new opportunities successfully.
There are a lot of conspiracy theories on this site as to why there has been no IPO, or whether there will ever be one.
But the most likely explanation is the simplest: SAS always moves slowly.
Granting the difficulty of consolidating international financial systems, and meeting other requirements, it still should not require six years to IPO. But SAS always moves slowly.