Ubiquitous digital advertising company Taboola goes public



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Taboola, the digital ad space provider that frequently appears at the bottom of websites, is heading to the stock market. The company announced Monday that it will do so via the preferred IPO vehicle of our time: a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC).

Taboola’s current business will be parked in the SPAC, an existing stock called ION Acquisition Corp 1 Ltd. (NYSE: IACA), thus becoming a listed company.

The deal is expected to close in the second quarter, Taboola said. The resulting entity will do business under the current name, and its ticker symbol is expected to change to TBLA.

Happy couple on the sofa looking at a tablet.

Image source: Getty Images.

Taboola said its merger with ION would bring in total proceeds of $ 545 million, between funds held in trust by ION and investments by third parties. According to Taboola, that values ​​the merged entity at around $ 2.6 billion. The company said it will spend more than $ 100 million researching and developing growth opportunities. He did not provide details on other spending targets.

As a private company, Taboola does not provide many details about its finances. In the marketing announcement on its website, it said its revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs, was $ 379 million in 2020. Operating profit was high at $ 34 million and Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before revenue, taxes, depreciation and amortization) exceeded $ 100 million. No net figure was provided.

In its words, Taboola “empowers digital asset owners to harness the value of AI-based recommendations and offers advertisers a way to effectively access users on the open web.”

He estimates the reach of what he describes as “the highly fragmented open web advertising market” at around $ 64 billion last year.



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