The San Fernando Valley has a new public company in BlackLine Inc. On Oct. 28, Founder and Chief Executive Therese Tucker rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square to commemorate her company’s first day of trading. By market close, the stock had gained 39 percent to $23.70 from an issue price of $17, valuing the Woodland Hills accounting software provider north of $1.1 billion. Randolph Beatty, a USC professor who specializes in initial public offerings, said a company’s goal is to have its share price rise “anywhere between 15 and 30 percent” on its first day of trading but warns of the thereafter. “That’s a pretty amazing movement in price in one day,” Beatty said, referring to BlackLine. “It suggests that there is a lot of uncertainty for the company and what demand was in the market for it. In literature, the price jump that happens on the first day reverts back roughly to the offering price over the next three years. Depending on how risky the company is, it may come back to a significantly lower price in three years.” BlackLine develops software that automates and manages accounting processes like closing out financial books and reconciling accounts. Some of its current customers include Coca-Cola Co., GoDaddy.com and Sirius XM Radio Inc. The company declined to comment as it has entered a quiet period following its first day of trading. Under Security and Exchange Commission rules, a new public company is prohibited from engaging in promotional publicity for its shares, typically for 40 to 90 days. Listed under the ticker symbol BL on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, BlackLine offered 8.6 million shares of common stock with a 30-day option to purchase up to 1.29 million additional shares. The shares closed Nov. 9 at $23.01. BlackLine debuts on the Business Journal’s Valley 50 Index in this issue (see page 31). The offering yielded $146 million, which will be used toward paying off a $65 million balance of its credit facility as well as for general corporate purposes. As the private equity market remains robust, U.S. initial public offerings have raised $16.9 billion since the beginning of 2016, which is 40 percent lower than the total raised by this time last year, according to Fortune magazine. In addition, there have been 94 initial public offerings thus far in 2016, which is only a little more than halfway to reaching last year’s count of 170, according to the Time Inc.-owned publication. “If you have a good product or idea, private equity investors are lining up, looking for opportunities, so it isn’t as crucial, at this point, to be a publicly-traded firm as it used to be,” said USC’s Beatty. BlackLine is the first Valley company to go public since Sylmar-based Second Sight Medical Products Inc. did in November 2014. The company’s shares had an initial price of $9 but soared to a closing that day at $19.97. Second Sight’s shares closed on Nov. 9 at $1.89.