Eyeblaster Eyes an IPO for the Second Time

Posted Mar 11th 2010 9:30AM by Tom Taulli
Filed under: Initial Public Offerings

In early 2008, online marketing firm Eyeblaster filed for an IPO. Of course, it was horrible timing as the financial system melted down and the U.S. economy plunged into a major recession.

True, the economic system has since stabilized. But is the market ready for an Eyeblaster IPO?

Well, the company has refiled for an offering, hoping to raise $115 million.

Basically, Eyeblaster provides digital advertising campaign management tools for ad agencies and advertisers. This is done through a platform called MediaMind, which helps deal with budgets and tracking of different channels like mobile, the Net, rich media, search and video.

Last year, Eyeblaster delivered more than 27,000 campaigns across 5,150 global web publishers in 55 countries. As for pricing, this is primarily based on the cost-per-thousand impressions delivered through MediaMind.

While revenues grew nicely from $44.7 million in 2007 to $65.1 million in 2009, the growth last year only came to 2%. No doubt, the recession has taken a toll. Although, Eyeblaster was still able to generate a healthy $16.7 million in EBITDA.

Despite the revenue fall-off, the long-term prospects look bright for Eyeblaster as spending continues to move increasingly online. And for the most part, Eyeblaster has a robust system and a strong customer base.

The lead underwriters on the IPO include J.P. Morgan (JPM) and Deutsche Bank Securities (DB).

Tom Taulli advises on business tax preparation and is also the author of a variety of books, including the including The Complete M&A Handbook. His website is at Taulli.com.

Tags: Eyeblaster, inthenews, IPOs