Silver Spring documentary streaming service CuriosityStream made its public market debut Thursday after a successful merger with blank-check company Software Acquisition Group Inc. Wednesday, the company said.
CuriosityStream, trading under the ticker symbol “CURI,” was opened the day at $11 per share and closed the day up slightly at $11.20. A blank-check company is a publicly traded company with no assets or products beyond cash, which merges with or acquires a private company, taking it public and bypassing the traditional initial public offering process.
“We are excited to become the first publicly traded streaming media company focused on delivering factual content,” John Hendricks, founder and chairman of CuriosityStream, said in a statement. “As a public company with new cash funding and access to the public capital markets, we are poised to dramatically accelerate our growth plans."
The transaction gave the combined company $180 million in cash, with CuriosityStream shareholders owning 63% of the shares of the combined company and Hendricks as the single largest shareholder.
While the company had explored a traditional IPO, the proliferation of these special purpose vehicles loaded up with cash gave the company a wide variety of possible partners, Hendricks said in an earlier interview in August, and he began looking several months ago at them as a streamlined alternative to going public. The company had always planned to go public in some way, especially after a massive $140 million round closed in February 2019, Hendricks said at the time.
CuriosityStream currently serves approximately 13 million paying subscribers in over 175 countries, the company said.
It has also doubled its revenue every year for the last three years, with $39.5 million expected for 2020, and more than $393 million projected for 2025. It expects to earn a profit in 2022, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The lion’s share of its revenue comes from bundled distribution through satellite and other content providers, where it can be added on to customer subscriptions. Its direct-to-consumer sales revenue is also significant — it accounted for $5.9 million, or one-third, of CuriosityStream's more than $18 million in revenue in 2019. The company charges about $19.99 per year for a direct subscription to its streaming service.
The company said its current management team, including CEO Clint Stinchcomb, will stay on. Hendricks will remain as chairman.
