Semrush Files Registration Statement for Proposed Initial Public Offering

Online marketing-tools firm SEMrush (SEMR) has filed for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, aiming to raise at least $100M. The firm also stated that it has $144M in annual recurring revenue and enjoyed at 50% compound annual growth rate between 2016 and 2020. All in, SEMrush reported a $7M net loss on $124.9M of revenues for 2020 – a significant improvement from a $10.2M net loss and $92.1M in revenues in 2019.

There are some interesting tweets from our industry related to this

SEMrush, the SEO tool, has filed to go public. Here's the S-1: https://t.co/i1meSHts4Y

They spent $54 million on marketing last year, for revenue of $125 million.

(gross profit $95m, net loss $7m) pic.twitter.com/iz5nybcwfA

— dan barker (@danbarker) March 1, 2021

That's cool, their raw data collection infra is impressive but.. most of their business is scraping Google. Can't see Google being OK with this without wanting a large piece of the pie. What would stop other rank trackers from IPO otherwise?

— Dave Sottimano (@dsottimano) March 2, 2021