A Montreal digital advertising platform is ready to make the jump to the Toronto Stock Exchange this fall.
Sharethrough, whose head office is located on De Gaspé Avenue in Montreal, hopes to raise $ 75 million by carrying out an initial public offering.
The start of trading under the symbol STRX is expected in early November. The company’s bankers want to set the initial stock price in a range of $ 15 to $ 19, which would result in an initial market cap of between $ 300 million and $ 400 million.
The company is the result of the merger of Montreal’s District M with Sharethrough, a San Francisco-based company. The two entities merged their activities last March.
The company’s ad exchange platform can support different formats including display, native advertising, videos, etc.
Sharethrough offers programmatic campaigns for advertisers, agencies and brands, among other things. The daily Los Angeles Times, Postmedia, Newsweek, Cossette and Press are all of the company’s customers.
The main shareholders are the Fonds de solidarité FTQ and Investissement Québec. Once the stock market listing is completed, they will hold 19% and 14% shares, respectively.
Led by Jean-François Côté, the company maintains in its prospectus that its technology is based on deep learning algorithms to target advertising performance (return on advertising spending, site traffic and brand awareness).
Fiscal year 2020 revenue reached US $ 48.1 million and a net loss of US $ 2.2 million was reported. For the first six months of 2021, however, a net profit of US $ 1.8 million was generated on revenues of US $ 27.2 million.
At the beginning of July, Sharethrough had 134 employees, that is to say 71 in Canada – most in Quebec – and 63 in the United States.
Management expects that the money raised by going public will be used in particular to strengthen the financial position of the company and help it continue to grow, which may include acquisitions.
The business is obviously dependent on the aggregate demand for advertising and the economic health of its current and prospective publishers and buyers. An economic downturn and a pandemic can cause advertisers to cut their advertising budgets, which can make it difficult to forecast Sharethrough’s revenues, the prospectus filed with the stock market authorities reads.
The stock market listing is managed by RBC Dominion Securities, National Bank Financial and Scotia Capital, the main underwriters responsible for the initial public offering.