Ancestry.com aiming for 2017 IPO

• Ancestry.com is close to hiring banks to lead an initial public offering of the company this year, Bloomberg reports.
• Company is said to work with Morgan Stanley, Goldman, JPMorgan
• Permira, Spectrum took genealogy company private in 2012 LBO

The private equity-backed company is working with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan for the listing, which could give it a market value of more than $3B.

Ancestry.com already generates more than $1B in revenue and has a growth rate of about 25%.  It’s grown rapidly through new ventures such as its DNA testing kits.

Permira completes $1.6B Ancestry.com acquisition

Genealogy website Ancestry.com (Nasdaq: ACOM) is being sold to the European private-equity firm Permira, for $1.6 billion, a 40 percent increase since the company first began chasing private equity interest in July. 

UK private equity giant Permira Advisers said it had completed the $1.6 billion acquisition of Ancestry.com (NASDAQ:ACOM), the most popular genealogy websites.

Shareholders of the Provo, Utah-based Ancestry.com approved the deal on Thursday.

The company claims to maintain more than 11 billion records included in 41 million family trees compiled by its 2 million subscribers.

Permira, with capital exceeding $30 billion, made its $32-a-share offer for Ancestry.com in late October. That was 41 percent above the price at which management announced it was putting the company up for sale on June 5.

Ancestry.com CEO Timothy Sullivan and other senior managers will remain with the company. They said under Permira ownership, there will be funds to expand in Europe and expand their business. The company was advised by Qatalyst Partners in the sale.

Other sites in the genealogy sector include private MyHeritage.com of Israel, a venture capital-backed company that last month acquired Geni.com. MyHeritage.com also has a U.S. office in Provo.

Ancestry.com (ACOM) started trading on the NASDAQ Thur 5 Nov 2009

Ancestry.com, Inc. (Ancestry.com) is an online family history resource. As of December 31, 2011, the Company had over 1.4 million paying subscribers worldwide. The foundation of its service is a collection of billions of historical records that the Company has digitized, indexed and put online over the past 14 years. It has developed and acquired systems for digitizing handwritten historical documents, and has relationships with national, state and local government archives, historical societies, religious institutions and private collectors of historical content worldwide. The Company’s subscribers use its online platform and digital historical record collection to research their family histories, build their family trees, collaborate with other subscribers, upload their own records and publish and share their stories. In July 2010, the Company acquired Genline AB. In August 2010, Ancestry.com acquired ProGenealogists.