The San Francisco, California-based company’s president and CEO, Enrique Salem, told ComputerWire last October that he was intending to take the company public during 2004. No date has been scheduled for the IPO although the company plans to float on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol BRML.

No details have been given by Brightmail of the number of shares on offer or the offer price, although the company has provided details of the rapid financial growth that it has enjoyed since 2000.

The company recorded revenue of $26.1m for the year ended January 31, 2004, up 114% from $12.2m in 2003, which was in turn up 89% from $6.4m in 2003, up 229% from $2.0m in 2001.

The company also recorded a net profit of $1.2m in 2004 compared to a loss of $5.0m in 2003. The net loss dropped steadily from $10.5m in 2002 and $12.2m in 2001. The company has also maintained its cash balance over the years with cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $26.8m in 2004, up from $22.3m in 2003 and total assets of $38.8m in 2004, up from $28.4m in 2003.

It is difficult to rank those figures against other anti-spam specialists given that the likes of CipherTrust, FrontBridge Technologies, Psotini, Cloudmark, MessageLabs, and Clearswift remain private.

It appears to be performing reasonably well compared to Tumbleweed Communications Corp, which recorded revenue of $30.6m in its full year ended December 31, 2003, up from $25.5m, with a net loss of $9.2m, but not as well as SurfControl Plc. SurfControl recorded revenue of $75.3m for its full year ended June 30, 2003, up from $54.2, with net income of $6.4m.

As well as these mail and content filtering specialists Brightmail also competes against security giants such as Computer Associates Inc, Network Associates Inc and Symantec Corp. To compete like this, Brightmail will have to move beyond its core anti-spam offering, and last October, Salem revealed that his firm is planning to do just that with expansion into managing email for improved employee productivity and archiving.

The remainder of this year and 2004 we’re really focused on the security aspects, but beyond that we’ll move into productivity and management, he said. Some of that we’ll develop organically, some of that we’ll partner for, and some of that we’ll have to acquire.

According to its filing with the SEC, Brightmail plans to use the funds raised through its IPO for general corporate purposes as well as potential investments or acquisitions.

This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire