RadiumOne Finalizes IPO Plan As It Hits ~$100M In AdTech Revenue

RadiumOne is completing the selection of which bankers will underwrite its IPO, which it plans to secretly file for soon, according to a source close to its Wall Street negotiations. The advertising tech company is said to have nearly $100 million in yearly revenue, and hopes to draft off of successful IPOs by fellow adtech provider RocketFuel and Twitter, which also filed a secret S-1.

RadiumOne provides businesses with marketing and analytics tools that generate data that the startup uses to target ads for its clients. It earns a cut of the advertising spend for accurately targeting the ads to potential and existing customers on the web, mobile, video, and Facebook. It’s said to be profitable, unlike some other players in the space that are still burning venture capital.

The company has raised $33.5 million from Crosslink CapitalAdams Street Partners, and Trinity Ventures. CEO Gurbaksh Chahal, who recently pleaded not guilty to allegations of assault, provided the company’s initial funding with proceeds from previously selling the startups BlueLithium and ValueClick for $300 million and $40 million respectively.

RadiumOne’s funding is about half that of competing adtech firm Rocket Fuel, which IPO’d last month and has seen its share price nearly double on the public market. Its success inspired RadiumOne to speed up its own IPO.

Gurbaksh-Chahal-199x300Our source says the schedule is to firm up which bankers will back the IPO and then monitor market conditions, especially the public debuts of Twitter and another ad tech startup called Criteo that filed last month. When things look right, it will confidentially file its S-1 thanks to the JOBS Act and go public after that.

RadiumOne declined to comment on these details.

RadiumOne’s public offering is timed to capitalize on Wall Street’s increased support for tech IPOs as of late. After Facebook stumbled out of the gates last year and saw half its value evaporate, it was dark days for IPOs for a while.

But $FB has now blown past its $38 IPO price to hit $50. Meanwhile, adtech firms that got beat up when they entered the public markets like Tremor and Marin Software have been clawing their way back up since July. It’s becoming clearer that TV ad dollars will shift to digital and that businesses can earn money on mobile ads, so RadiumOne seems to think it’s ready for the spotlight.

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