HubSpot Files For $100 Million IPO

Cambridge Internet marketing firm HubSpot has filed for an initial public offering to raise $100 million. It will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol HUBS.

Its IPO registration filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that HubSpot's revenue has been growing strongly, to $79 million last year. However, the eight-year-old firm has been losing money each year. HubSpot cited net losses last year of $34 million and $18 million for the first half of 2014. Successive net losses are typical for businesses that are rapidly growing a global subscription base.

HubSpot provides online marketing services to small and medium-sized businesses. The company's product suite helps them optimize their websites and online customer interactions to make it easier to attract and keep customers. This form of marketing is known as inbound marketing, and reduces the reliance on traditional paid advertising.

In the filing, HubSpot says it has 11,500 customers, mostly medium-sized businesses, the majority of them outside of the United States. While most of the company's more than 719 full-time employees are in Cambridge, it also has offices in Dublin and Sydney. The IPO may indicate a need to fund future expansion as well as to provide an exit to the venture capital firms, primarily Greater Boston ones, that have financed the company's growth so far.

The Cambridge venture capital firm General Catalyst owns 27 percent of the company and Waltham's Matrix Partners invested in a 17 percent stake. Charles River Ventures owns 5 percent.

HubSpot joins Wayfair as another big Boston-area company to go to the public markets recently.