LifeLock IPO Banks on Identity Theft

Hoping to cash in on the more than 11.4 million adults that were victims of identity theft in the U.S. in 2011, LifeLock Inc., an online identity theft protection service, is expected to raise $165 million in its IPO today in the NYSE under the ticker symbol LOCK. Shares are expected to trade at a price range of $9.50 to $11.50, according to Renaissance Capital.

Joint-book runners managing the offering are Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Deutsche Bank. The IPO is co-managed by RBC Capital Markets, Canaccord Genuity and Needham.

The Arizona-based company announced the IPO in August, and booked revenue of more than $228 million in the past 12 months. Its net income was $8 million. At an average stock price of $10.50, LifeLock's value would jump to $981 million.

September 10, LifeLock also announced the appointment of Hilary Schneider as president. Schneider, former executive vice president of the Americas for Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), has more than 20 years of experience in the consumer, advertising and publishing segments of Yahoo. Todd Davis remains LifeLock's chairman and chief executive officer.

“I have spent my career helping technology companies grow and scale,” Schneider said, hinting at the growth LifeLock expects. In 2011 identity fraud increased by 13 percent according to a report by Javelin Strategy and Research. Key contributing factors were consumers switch to mobile devices and data breaches. Recent data breaches include Dropbox, LinkedIn (NASDAQ: LNKD), Yahoo and Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) Gmail, all online providers that hold important identity information.

LifeLock was founded in 2005 and has more than 400 employees. A web-based consumer service, it currently monitors credit, payday loans, public records and proactively reduces the amount of pre-approved credit offers circulated in the mail through a proprietary method.