Keith J. Kelly

Keith J. Kelly

Media

For a Glam IPO, Wall Street will need wooing

It has been nearly a year since Glam Media filed for what is known as a “secret initial public offering” under provisions of the JOBS Act — and the actual IPO has yet to be revealed.

But, sources said, it is slowly proceeding and could still happen later this year.

“Admittedly, a year is a long time to be in registration, but that is the point of these new rules — to allow companies to get their ducks in order before unveiling their IPO documents,” said a spokesperson for Renaissance Capital, a research firm that studies IPOs. It is not connected to Glam.

An earlier Glam plan to go public back in 2011 was postponed indefinitely.

Many observers were predicting it would go public by the end of 2013. Now, with the equity markets looking a bit skittish, it looks like it will arrive in the second quarter — at the earliest.

The company needs an IPO grand slam to be able to pay out to investors, including Accel Partners and others who have pumped in a reported $175 million since its inception way back in 2004 — an eternity for Internet companies.

Glam, in December, was ranked as the 8th-largest website tracked by comScore, with December 2013 traffic of 126.9 million unique visitors across all platforms — little changed from its February 2013 total of 126.1.

Its chief obstacle in an IPO will be to convince Wall Street that it is more than an ad network.

“Glam is an amalgamation of websites and many of them don’t line up with its target audience of fashionable women,” said one skeptical internet executive who has bought and sold a number of digital sites.

Although only 20 percent of the content is supplied by Glam, CEO Samir Arora has in the past insisted it’s never been an ad network, but is a multichannel media property.

Jeff Jarvis, a past adviser to Glam and a professor at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, agrees.

“There are low-quality ad networks, but that is not Glam,” Jarvis said. “Glam is aggregating dedicated quality audiences into networks to take to large brands.”

Ad officials for the company are boasting that it is the No. 1 site in style, the No. 1 in parenting and the No. 3 in food, thanks to the launch of Foodie last year, which pulled in 13.8 million uniques in December.

After buying Ning for $150 million, Glam is said to be profitable. Revenues are believed to be more than $100 million. But one executive said it would be hard to get anything more than 11 times earnings in an IPO.

Board member Marc Andreessen is said to be a fan of taking a long time to market — and supporters point out that Twitter kicked around its JOBS Act filing for over a year.

Company officials, citing legal requirements, declined to comment.