Nice N&O article. May 19th; I had missed it.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article306489106.html
What Goodnight’s decision to keep SAS private has meant for its workers and Cary
By Brian Gordon
Updated May 19, 2025 8:25 AM
I’m Brian Gordon, tech reporter for The News & Observer, and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.
SAS Institute turns 50 next year, and for more than half its lifetime, the media (and employees) have asked whether the giant analytics provider will ever go public.
“Personally, I don’t want the hassle of running a public company,” Jim Goodnight, SAS cofounder and CEO, told The N&O in 1995. “It would ruin my life.”
Goodnight’s ongoing decision to keep SAS private has shaped the company that — more than any other — has shaped the town of Cary. A two-thirds owner, Goodnight made his business into a model for work-life-balance, earning SAS accolades for its 35-hour work weeks, on-site child care, housing options, free M&Ms, and a resident pianist playing in the cafeteria. The company was known for hiring couples who would commute together with their kids. Former Cary Mayor Koka Booth worked at SAS, and current Cary Mayor Harold Weinbrecht Jr. spent a career there, too.
“Some employees now live, work and shop almost entirely in what some called SASland,” The N&O wrote in 1996.
Today, SAS says it’s again readying to go public, a pledge the company has made before. In 2000, Goodnight predicted the company would likely hit the market within 12 to 18 months. His motivation, he said, was to keep workers from jumping to the upstart internet companies that dangled lucrative stock options.
SAS brought in Andre Boisvert to complete the IPO and soon named him president and COO. Yet within a few months, Boisvert abruptly resigned when Goodnight’s interest in going public faded. “I wouldn’t want any of these young kids on Wall Street running my company,” Goodnight said in 2002, dismissing the appeal of the stock market.
“My goal in life is to minimize taxes — make our bottom line as small as possible,” he also said that year. “I always thought that was the American way — not inflating earnings.” Two years later, Goodnight told USA Today “we were never really close” to going public.
What was lost in this decision? A few years earlier, the IPO of the Raleigh software provider Red Hat made several local employees overnight millionaires. Some Red Hat executives then invested their windfalls to start tech companies — which spawned other local businesses nicknamed “Red Hat’s grandkids.” SAS workers have never enjoyed the financial jolt that comes with holding shares during a successful public offering.
But others argued staying private allowed SAS to remain SAS. The expenses that landed SAS on “Best Places to Work” lists — childcare, gourmet lunches, 35-hour work weeks — could have run counter to investor demands.
“It would have destroyed the culture,” Al Segars of the UNC business school said in 2004. “It was one of the best strategic decisions ever made in the software industry.”
Now, the man who never seemed that thrilled about going public once again says SAS is preparing for the stock market. Some of the reasons the company gives in 2025 are similar to what was said 25 years ago, like offering employees stock options, attracting talent and raising SAS’ profile.
In an email to The N&O, SAS spokesperson Shannon Heath said the 82-year-old Goodnight also seeks the stock market “for succession planning to position the company for long-term growth.”
“We know that we will be an attractive investment for investors,” Heath wrote in an email. “Few companies have made it to the 50-year mark, but even fewer have done it how we have, which is debt free and profitable since day one.”
When investors will get the chance to prove SAS right or wrong is unclear. A promise to IPO in 2024 has passed. A subsequent aim to reach the market this year is now unlikely.
So don’t hold your breath on SAS ever becoming a public company. Then again, SAS is starting to consider life after Goodnight — and its next step will be worth tracking.