Online Dating Website Zoosk Files for IPO of Up To $100M

Online dating website Zoosk Inc filed with U.S. regulators on Wednesday to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering of common stock.

BofA Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and RBC Capital Markets are the underwriters to the IPO, the San Francisco-based company told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a preliminary prospectus.

The filing did not reveal how many shares the company planned to sell or their expected price.

The company intends to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "ZSK." (http://r.reuters.com/faz58v)

Zoosk, which was launched in 2007, has more than 26 million members, including about 650,000 subscribers in 80 countries, according to the filing.

Zoosk is backed by venture capital firms including Canaan VIII LP, ATA Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners. Canaan, with a 32.4 percent stake, is the company's biggest shareholder.

The company was co-founded by Shayan Zadeh and Alex Mehr, who met as students in Tehran's Sharif University of Technology. Zadeh is the current chief executive while Mehr is the president and a director of Zoosk.

Net proceeds from the offering will be used for general corporate purposes, including working capital and capital expenditure, Zoosk said in the filing.

The company's net loss narrowed to $2.62 million from $20.66 million for 2013. Revenue rose more than 63 percent to $178.23 million.

The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

(Reporting by Avik Das in Bangalore; Editing by Simon Jennings)