In yet another sign that the appetite for shares in fast-growing technology companies has returned, Ancestry.com, a genealogy website that lets users trace their family origins, filed for a $75m initial public offering on Monday.
In its filing with the SEC, the company revealed that it has almost 1m paying customers, and took in $107m over the last six months, with profits of $8m. The company plans to list on either Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange as ACOM. Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are the two lead underwriters.
Ancestry.com will be the latest tech company to go public after a nearly yearlong drought. SolarWinds, a Texas-based maker of system management software, raised $151m in its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in May. The next day, OpenTable, a website that lets users make restaurant reservations, raised $60m.
Ancestry.com is not cookie-cutter tech company. Founded way back in 1983, the company began as a publisher of family history books. It went online in 1997 and eventually changed its name to Ancestry.com as it began to offer online tools that allow users to map their family trees.
In 2007 Ancestry.com sold a majority stake to Spectrum Equity Investors for $300m. Before that it had raised $95m in three rounds.
