Shutterstock Inc. has just joined the wave of online companies planning to come public via an initial public offering.  This company is an online stock photo website that gets its stock photos from photographers, illustrators, and also videographers. In short, think of a crowd-sourced smaller version of Getty Images or Bill Gates’ Corbis.  No financial terms were disclosed, but the filing does show that the sale will be up to $115 million in common stock.  The company will list its shares under the “SSTK” stock ticker on the New York Stock Exchange.

Shutterstock has grown and grown serving over 150 countries with 10 languages, it claims to have over 10,000 images added each day, from over 35,000 contributors, and encompassing more than 550,000 paying customers.  Its total library is said to be more than 19 million images and it claims more than 200 million in all-time downloads.

Revenues have grown each year: $30 million in 2007, $53 million in 2008, $61 million in 2009, $83 million in 2010, and $120 million in 2011. Shutterstock’s filing showed a profit of $21.9 million in 2011. Some 43% of revenue comes from the Americas region, 46% from the EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) region, and 11% from the Asia Pacific region.  The company also lists Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) as a competitor via Google Images, as well as Facebook, Flickr, and others all competing in the space in form or another.

The lead underwriters include Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, and Jefferies.  Co-managers are listed as RBC Capital Markets, Stifel Nicolaus Wiesel, and William Blair. As we have seen in many filings, the  use of proceeds is the traditional “for general corporate purposes” which can include acquisitions of companies and/or technologies.

FULL IPO FILING

JON C. OGG

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