Brightmail IPO promises profits from spam

Anti-spam vendor Brightmail has joined the growing ranks of tech companies lining up for a 2004 IPO.

The company, which has seen huge growth over the past couple of years as the spam problem grew to epidemic proportions, filed late last month with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

If all goes to plan, Google, Salesforce.com and Brightmail will certainly represent the most significant period of IPO activity in the IT industry for some years.

Brightmail said in its registration statement that it will use the proceeds of the IPO to strengthen and broaden its offering, which is likely to heighten speculation that there may be acquisitions in the pipeline and potential consolidation within the email filtering industry.

Despite predicting the 'death of spam' Salem is confident his company's success won't be putting them out of business - a suggestion levelled at many companies.

Speaking earlier this year, prior to the SEC filing and subsequent quiet period, Salem told silicon.com: "I'm not predicting that spammers will stop spamming in two years. I'm predicting that we'll stop seeing it in our inbox. As long as we have technology we will have a need to secure it."

"Spam and spammers won't go away," he added. Which has to be good news for Brightmail and its future share holders.

Brightmail claims that spam now makes up 63 per cent of all email traffic. Last month the company claims to have filtered out nearly three billion fraudulent emails.