ZoomInfo lines up banks for potentially USD 8bn listing, sources say

ZoomInfo has tapped Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan to serve as underwriters on an initial public offering that could see the fast-growing B2B information provider valued at as much as USD 8bn on enterprise value basis, three sources familiar with the matter said.

ZoomInfo has tapped Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan to serve as underwriters on an initial public offering that could see the fast-growing B2B information provider valued at as much as USD 8bn on enterprise value basis, three sources familiar with the matter said.

The listing comes a year after TA Associates and Carlyle Group-backed DiscoverOrg acquired ZoomInfo from Great Hill Partners before subsequently rebranding the entire group as ZoomInfo. The Vancouver, Washington-based company announced in November that it had submitted a confidential draft statement to the SEC ahead of a potential IPO.

A number of other investment banks are also slated to serve as underwriters on the listing, the sources said. A roadshow may start as soon as late winter, one of the sources said.

In January 2019, DiscoverOrg raised USD 1.3bn in financing to acquire ZoomInfo and refinance existing debt based on projected pro forma EBITDA of USD 174m, according to sister publication Debtwire. Morgan Stanley led the debt offering. Buysiders told Debtwire in January 2019 that one concern they had about the company is its data collection practices, which include scrapping business people’s contact information from the web and from the inboxes of users who join its free service.

ZoomInfo provides data including corporate organization charts, contact lists and news through its subscription-based platform. In the press release announcing the company’s rebranding, ZoomInfo quoted consultant Michael Levy as saying that it is “well placed” to compete with the market-leading sales navigator product from LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft. 

With over USD 300m in revenue, ZoomInfo can be compared to high growth companies like ServiceNow, a developer of digital workflow tools, and Dynatrace, which offers enterprise cloud services, two of the sources said.

ServiceNow and Dynatrace trade at around 14x forward revenue estimates and 17x trailing revenue. ZoomInfo has higher revenue growth than those firms, coming in at around 40%, according to one of the sources.

Enterprise technology companies like Dynatrace and Zoom Video Communications that went public in 2019 have fared far better in the public markets than consumer-oriented technology startups that listed last year. Zoom, a profitable provider of communication solutions, trades at around 25x forward revenue.

ZoomInfo, Carlyle, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley declined to comment. TA Associates did not respond to request for comment.

by Bhavna Kaul and Jonathan Guilford