Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Ancestry.com Inc., the world’s largest online provider of family histories, surged in its first day of trading after raising $100 million in an initial public offering.

The Provo, Utah-based company advanced 70 cents, or 5.2 percent, to $14.20 at 4 p.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. Ancestry.com, private-equity firms Spectrum Equity Investors and W Capital Partners, and other owners sold 7.41 million shares at $13.50 each, the midpoint of its forecast range in its IPO yesterday. The sale valued the company at about $572 million, and the shares trade under the ticker ACOM.

Ancestry.com is the second U.S. company IPO in November after underwriters failed to convince investors in the past week to buy shares of George Town, Cayman Islands-based AEI, Aviv REIT Inc. in Chicago and Dallas-based PlainsCapital Corp.

“They’re the leader in the market,” said Eric Guja, an analyst at Renaissance Capital LLC in Greenwich, Connecticut. “Their profit margins are impressive.”

Earnings after the cost of sales is deducted represented 78 percent of Ancestry.com’s revenue in 2008, matching the margin at Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software company, during the past four quarters.

Morgan Stanley of New York and Charlotte, North Carolina- based Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch & Co. unit underwrote yesterday’s Ancestry.com sale after also managing the Aviv REIT offering that was shelved on Nov. 3.

IPO Resurgence

September and October were the busiest two months for offerings in almost two years as sellers took advantage of a more than 50 percent rally in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index from its March low to unload shares. Initial sales evaporated in the fourth quarter of last year after New York-based Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed the world’s largest bankruptcy and spurred a credit-market freeze.

Ancestry.com, which provides subscription-based genealogical information over the Internet, will receive 55 percent of the proceeds from the IPO, according to a regulatory filing before its share sale. The remainder will go to shareholders including the trust of James Sorenson, once Utah’s richest man. He died in 2008. The underwriters have the option of buying an additional 1.1 million shares.

The company, which had $115 million in long-term debt at the end of September, will use some of its proceeds to pay down $12.1 million in borrowings, the regulatory filing showed.

Ancestry.com earned 30 cents per share in the first nine months of 2009. At the $13.50 IPO price, the company is valued at 33.8 times profits over a full year, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That’s less than the average 42 times estimated 2009 profits for U.S. Internet software and services companies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Hyatt Hotels Corp., the chain controlled by Chicago’s Pritzker family, climbed $3, or 12 percent, to $28 on the New York Stock Exchange today after raising $950 million in the third-largest U.S. initial public offering this year.

To contact the reporters on this story: Michael Tsang in New York at mtsang1@bloomberg.net; Tim Mullaney in New York at tmullaney1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 5, 2009 16:45 EST