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Shares of SecureWorks Corp. opened lower Friday, ending a four-month drought of U.S. technology initial public offerings, the longest in seven years.

The shares opened at $13.89, 0.8% lower than their IPO price of $14. They started trading on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol SCWX.

The cybersecurity arm of Dell Inc. priced its IPO below expectations Thursday, raising $112 million through the sale of 8 million shares. It had targeted a sale of 9 million shares at $15.50 to $17.50 each.

The disappointing pricing raised questions over whether others in the sector will follow suit. After a dismal first quarter, investors and other technology companies hoped SecureWorks would indicate that the IPO market is returning to health. To be sure, should the stock trade well Friday, it still could pave the way for other companies—both in and outside tech—to tap the public markets. It also would come on the heels of a few other successful offerings.

There were hints that demand might be soft in the company's so-called roadshow presentations for potential investors where it encountered skepticism due to its lack of profitability and the recent poor performance of rivals, according to people who were considering buying shares in the IPO.

The first quarter was the slowest for U.S.-listed IPOs since 2009, hurt by a spasm of broader market uncertainty. The tech industry, traditionally the engine of the IPO market, has been hit particularly hard, in part by private-market valuations many investors see as inflated.

But lately there have been signs of life.

Shares of the first major company to debut this year, Bats Global Markets Inc., which started trading last Friday, are more than 20% above their IPO price even after underwriters priced them at the high end of their targeted range and added to the offering.

MGM Growth Properties LLC, a real-estate investment trust that raised more than $1 billion, started trading Wednesday and closed up nearly 5% in its first day as a public company after pricing at the high end of its target range. Shares of the REIT are currently up 3.6% from their IPO price.

The fact that SecureWorks shares managed to price at all is a victory of sorts. No other tech firm has listed shares in the U.S. since a small Chinese company did so in mid-December. That makes for the longest drought since the period between November 2008 and April 2009, according to Dealogic.

Part of the problem is that investors' patience for loss-making companies has thinned. Many firms that tapped the IPO market early last year and in 2014 could find interest as long as they had a clear path to profits. That is no longer the case.

A number of closely watched tech IPOs of the past two years are trading below their IPO prices, including Hortonworks Inc., Etsy Inc. and Box Inc.

"The companies that go out in the near term are going to be profitable or have a near-term path to profitability," said Kristin DeClark, head of technology equity capital markets at Deutsche Bank AG. Investors want assurance that a company is funded until it can break even and won't be forced to tap the equity market again soon, she said.

In its prospectus, SecureWorks warned potential investors that it has a history of losses and may not achieve or maintain profitability. The company had $72.4 million in net losses in fiscal 2016, compared with $38.5 million the year before.

Cybersecurity stocks have performed poorly in 2016, continuing declines that began in the second half of last year.

"Investors got overly excited" about cybersecurity stocks in 2014 and 2015 after a series of prominent data breaches, said Israel Hernandez, senior portfolio analyst at Columbia Threadneedle Investments. The growth that was implied by the high valuations "didn't quite materialize."

The cybersecurity ETF, PureFunds ISE Cyber Security Exchange-Traded Fund, has lost 9.2% in 2016.

SecureWorks isn't a perfect bellwether for the tech IPO market. It is different from many private tech companies in Silicon Valley, as it was founded during the last tech boom and is housed inside a large, established corporate parent.

But a successful debut still could help break a logjam formed by many of those billion-dollar startups that have been waiting in the wings.

Dell parent Denali Holding Inc. aimed to sell 9 million shares of SecureWorks. The offering is part of an overhaul of the PC maker that includes its $67 billion pending acquisition of EMC Corp.

The deal is underwritten by a group of banks including Bank of America Corp., Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Write to Maureen Farrell at maureen.farrell@wsj.com and Corrie Driebusch at corrie.driebusch@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 22, 2016 11:15 ET (15:15 GMT)

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