Pandora IPO Filing is Music to Investors’ Ears

Wade Roush2/11/11

Oakland, CA-based Pandora, the vastly popular personalized streaming music service, filed an S-1 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission today in preparation for an initial public offering this year. In the filing, the company said it hopes to raise as much as $100 million in a sale of common stock, and revealed that it is nearly profitable: It suffered a net loss of just $0.3 million in the first nine months of 2010, against revenue of $55.2 million. (The company earns money primarily on advertising through the Pandora website, though it also collected $5 million in fiscal 2010 for premium subscription services.) Venture backer Crosslink Capital owns the largest chunk of Pandora shares (23 percent), according to the filing; Walden Venture Capital, Greylock Partners, Labrador Ventures, the Hearst Corporation, and GGV Capital also stand to profit from the offering. Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan will underwrite the IPO.

Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent and editor of Xconomy San Francisco. You can subscribe to his Google Group or e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com. Follow @