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Index Stock
October 2, 1996
Index Stock has also filed with the SEC for permission to sell 1,000,000 shares
of common stock on the NASDAQ exchange. Their trading symbol will be ISPI.
It is currently anticipated that the initial public offering price will be
between $8 and $10 per share and they estimate that they will raise
approximately $7,400,000 in new capital after deducting underwriting discounts,
commissions and offering expenses. This figure is 3.34 times their gross annual
1995 sales.Given the shares of Index that are already privately held, there will
be 2,366,523 total shares of Index after completion of this sale.
In 1995, Index had gross sales of $2,215,000 and a net loss of $420,948. They
paid out $705,000 in royalties to their photographers or 31.8% of gross sales.
Index says they pay commissions of between 25% and 70% on certain usages.
In 1995 about 39% of Index's sales came from outside the U.S. Thus, of their
total revenues $1,351,150 came from U.S. sales and $863,850 came from overseas.
The SEC filing does not say this, but we know that it is common practice for
foreign agencies to deduct 40% of gross sales in their country before returning
the balance to the U.S. agency. Therefore, the $863,850 actually represents
about $1,440,000 in gross foreign sales.
When we add the gross foreign sales of $1,440,000 to the gross U.S. sales of
$1,351,150 we get $2,791,150 in actual gross sales of the photography in 1995.
In this event, the $705,000 that the photographers received is only 25% of
actual sales. Index sells in 34 foreign countries through 21 independent
foreign agents.
Index has 39 employees giving us an income per employee figure of $56,794.87.
They represent about 400 photographers meaning that the average photographer
earns about $1,762.50 per year.
See related Getty Communications story.
See related Public Ownership story.