UPDATE 1-Ancestry.com to price $100 mln IPO Nov. 4
NEW YORK, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Ancestry.com Inc (ACOM.O), which operates a website that allows people to trace their family roots by scouring online records, is set to go public next month in a planned $100 million offering.
Ancestry.com said it had 1 million subscribers as of September and that it expects to sell 7.4 million shares in its IPO for between $12.50 and $14.50 each, according to an updated prospectus filed on Tuesday.
The Provo, Utah, company will price the shares on Nov. 4 and begin to trade on Nasdaq under the symbol "ACOM" the next day.
Ancestry.com, founded in 1983, is majority owned by private equity firm Spectrum Equity Investors, whose stake in the company will fall to 54.8 percent after the IPO from 67 percent. Spectrum bought Ancestry.com for $354.8 million in Dec. 2007.
The existing shareholders are selling about 45 percent of the shares in the IPO, with the rest coming from the company.
Ancestry.com expects net proceeds of $48.4 million from the IPO, and will use the money in part to repay $12.1 million it owes CIT Lending Services Corp, a unit of CIT Group Inc, (CIT.N) and use the rest for working capital.
Ancestry.com's registered users have built 12 million family trees containing 1.25 billion profiles, according to the filing.
Its revenue in the first nine months of 2009 was $164.8 million, largely from subscriptions, up 13.5 percent from the year earlier period. Over the same period, its profit rose 250 percent to $12.2 million. In 2008, each subscriber generated about $16.09 in revenues per month.
The IPO will be lead managed by Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Underwriters will have the option to buy another 1.1 million shares. (Reporting by Phil Wahba; editing by Gunna Dickson)
