Synacor rides TV Everywhere wave with $75M IPO

Synacor, the online video technology company that operates portals for Charter Communications (Nasdaq: CHTR) and other broadband providers, said it hopes to raise $75 million through an initial public offering.

Buffalo, N.Y.-based Synacor submitted its S-1 filing at the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. The company first filed plans for an IPO in 2007, but cancelled the offering in October 2008, as the stock market tanked.

Synacor is banking on increased multiplatform distribution efforts from cable operators and programmers to grow revenue. The company is shopping a platform that pay TV providers and broadband ISPs can use to build TV Everywhere websites.

Synacor's two largest customers are Charter and CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL), with those two companies accounting for 60 percent of its revenue in 2010, according to its S-1 filing. Synacor generated $66.2 million in revenue in 2010, up from $60.1 million in 2009 and $52.571 million in 2008, according to the SEC filing.

While major pay TV providers such as Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) and Dish Network (Nasdaq: DISH) have built their own TV Everywhere websites, Synacor is targeting mostly small and mid-sized providers with its TVE platform. In October, it announced a deal to build a TVE portal for cable overbuilder Grande Communications.

The underwriters for Synacor's IPO include BofA Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Stifel Nicolaus Weisel, BMO Capital Markets, Needham and Company and Oppenheimer & Co.

Synacor's investors include Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), which owns about 10 percent of the company.

For more:
- see Synacor's S-1 filing
- Reuters has this story

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