This week Wednesday: Hopes to Raise $100 million in IPO

This week: Hopes to Raise $100 million in IPO

Genealogy Web site Ancestry.com hopes to raise about $ 100 million when it goes public this week.With more than a million paying subscribers, little competition, a small debt load and a record of increasing revenues,it may fare better than other IPOs that bave recently priced below their filing ranges.
The provo, Utah-based company, which is the world's largest online resurce for birth certificates and marriage records, expects ot price the shares between $12.50 and $14.50 apiece on Wednesday.Underwiters are being offered up to an additional 1.1milliom shares to cover overallotments,wich would boost total proceeds to about $115 million.
Five of the last nine IPOs bhave closed below their offering price in the first day.But experts say that shouldn't be the case for Sncestry because technology IPOs bave collectively performend about twice as well as other sectors so far this yeat.

Underwriters for the deal include Morgan Stanley, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, BMO Capital Markets Corp., Jefferies & Co. and Piper Jaffray & Co. It will trade under the symbol "ACOM" on the Nasdaq Global Market.

Founded in 1983 as Ancestry Inc., the company started out publishing books to help genealogy buffs research family lineage and moved to Web-based documents and tools. With more than 600 employees, Ancestry.com was spun off from The Generations Network, a group of businesses offering other Web tools, DNA testing services and Ancestry magazine.

The president, CEO and director of the company, Timothy Sullivan, was president and CEO of Match.com, a dating site run by Internet company IAC/InterActiveCorp., before joining Ancestry in 2005.