Canonical Shifts Its Fiscal Year Ahead Of Likely IPO

You have likely heard by now about Ubuntu maker Canonical planning to do an initial public offering (IPO) at some point in the not too distant future to become a publicly-traded company. The latest sign of that is Canonical has now shifted its corporate calendar.

Rather than ending its accounting period now on 31 March of each year, Canonical is shifting that to align with the end of each calendar year (31 December). 31 March tends to be the end of fiscal years for UK-based organizations. This change may indicate a desire of Canonical to more likely list on one of the US-based stock exchanges rather than London, but others may have differing hypothesis over the change.

Canonical filed with UK's Companies House recently to indicate their change in accounting dates.

Canonical recently indicated they do not plan for an IPO this year (2018) though I probably wouldn't bet on them to IPO until likely H2'2020 after the release of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS when they have more corporate adoption numbers to talk about from a fresh long-term support release, etc. Regardless of how it pans out, it will be interesting to watch.