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IPO - Monday, April 2, 2007

Net Analyst comScore Files For IPO

Reston, VA-based comScore has filed for an $86.25M IPO. comScore is best known for its traffic rankings of search engines and other web properties, data that it gathers from survey panels. But the company makes most of its revenues from more customized research that it. It sells clients with the ability to conduct survey research studies using comScore panelists, focused on a wide range of online and offline issues, including customer satisfaction, purchase intent, barriers to purchasing specific brands, attitudes about competitive products/ services, brand usage behavior — and more.

comScore’s revenues in 2005 were $50.3M, an increase of 45% over revenues of $34.9M in 2004. Since 2001, comScore’s revenues have grown at a compound annual rate of 56%.

comScore has laid waste to its competitors including: Media Metrix (which it acquired), Nielsen//NetRatings, @Plan (bought by Netratings from Doubleclick), PC Data (out of business, NetValue, AdRelevance and others. However, historically leadership in this space has traded hands rapidly. iPro was the comScore of its day and yielded this position and there are now many upstarts like Quancast as well as big companies like Google that are doing innnovative work.

ComScore has raised over $92M in VC funding.

Investors Pre-IPO Stake
Accel Partners 27.3%
JPMorgan Partners 11.6%
Institutional Venture Partners 10.1%

comScore's founders are Euro-Interneters. CEO is Magid Abraham. Dr. Abraham was founder and CEO of CRM firm Paragren Technologies. He was also President of research company Information Resources. His co-founder & Chairman is Gian M. Fulgoni who was president and CEO of Information Resources.