RPX filed for an IPO this week. Public companies are rare in this space, so the S-1 provides a fascinating peak behind the scenes of the patent aggregation business. Here are the details I picked out.

Revenue is about $85MM/yr with 15% net margins (25% pre-tax, run rate). They raised $64MM in equity financing, with roughly equal stakes held by KPCB, CRV, and Index. There are 65 member companies and the top 10 account for 50% of all revenue. Also, 50% of revenue is from foreign members. They have $40MM in cash and claim $130MM in patent assets, but have ~$120MM in liabilities. They’ve spent $250MM in about 50 total patent transactions, half of those being aquisitions, half licenses with right to grant sublicenses. (But, it looks like $250MM is greater than total revenue and capital raised, so some of these were clearly financed.) Two companies apparently got membership by contributing IP vice cash…not sure how that works. The top brass make $600k-800k/yr in total compensation and some received up to $2MM in stock options this year. Based on some of the cap tables, it looks like the ownership is about 25% each to the cofounders, KPCB, CRV and Index. But, that doesn’t entirely make sense to me because there are a total of 26 stock holders.

I recommend reading the ‘Other Obligations’ section written by the PWC auditors for some good insights into how RPX finances its deals. Also, if I’ve calculated anything incorrectly above, please comment.