BuzzFeed is planning to launch an IPO next year, report says

An initial public offering has long been in the cards for BuzzFeed, but a new report says the digital news and entertainment site will take itself public next year.

“Viral powerhouse BuzzFeed is quietly making preparations to go public in 2018,” according to Mike Allen the co-founder of digital news site Axios on Wednesday, citing undisclosed industry sources.

In its most recent fundraising round in November 2016, BuzzFeed was reported to carry a valuation of $1.5 billion.

BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti has often voiced that he’d like to go public at some point. Allen offers no insights into why Peretti is setting his sights on 2018 as the time to finally make it happen.

Peretti does have a boatload of venture backers to satisfy. The company has raised $446.3 million in 6 rounds from 14 different investors, going back as far as 2008 when it picked up Series A funding from Hearst Ventures, according to Crunchbase.

BuzzFeed’s backers have grown to include NBC Universal, New Enterprise Associates, Lerer Hippeau Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz among others.

BuzzFeed generated its early traffic with listicles and cat videos, but has pushed for more serious and investigative work as well in recent years. Its advertising is derived primarily from native advertising — long-form video ads designed to resemble editorial content.

The company was said to be burning through its cash for most of its existence, but in 2014, Peretti said the company became profitable. There were reports — never confirmed by BuzzFeed — that it missed its growth projections in 2015.

In Peretti’s 2016 year-end statement to employees he said, “our revenue grew over 65 percent this year, continuing a trend of 25 quarters in a row of double-digit year-over-year revenue growth.”

The company declined comment on its actual revenues or any profit or loss and declined to say whether it has IPO plans on deck for 2018.