The e-commerce technology and services firm trades as ECOM.

ChannelAdvisor Corp. is now a public company. Stocks of the e-commerce technology and services firm began trading on the New York Stock Exchange today. The company’s stock started trading today at $17.60, up 26% from $14 share price it set yesterday.

ChannelAdvisor is trading under the aptly-selected—and enviable—ticker ECOM. Channel Advisor CEO Scot Wingo, commenting on the ticker name, tells Internet Retailer: “Much to our surprise it was available. So we figured we should be bold and go for it.”

ChannelAdvisor announced its plans to go public in late April, saying at the time it wanted to raise $86.25 million in its initial stock offering. Yesterday it said 5.75 million shares would be available at the $14 price, which would raise the company $80.5 million. Another 862,500 shares are available at the $14 price to underwriters for 30 days. If sold, that would raise ChannelAdvisor an additional $12.08 million. The stock price had jumped as high as $19.49 in initial trading as of press time.

The company, which helps its clients feed their product data and images to e-marketplaces, comparison shopping engines and Internet search engines, is ranked No. 1 among providers of e-marketplace management services in Internet Retailer’s Leading Vendors to the Top 1000 E-Retailers. Clients include 111 e-retailers listed in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide and 39 in the Internet Retailer Second 500 Guide.

In a letter posted on the ChannelAdvisor web site, CEO Scot Wingo said going public “provides us the funding to explore new ideas, expand our platform and address new markets.”

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Wingo says that ChannelAdvisor has increased its spending on sales and marketing by 50% in the past few years, and that its IPO proceedings will support more aggressive investment in that area as it continues to seek growth among larger retailers worldwide. “We have about 2,000 customers, including 25% of the Internet Retailer Top 500, but it’s still early innings for us,” he says. He adds that ChannelAdvisor expects to grow with the trend of more large brands that are selling through e-marketplaces, such as the Fashion Outlet section of eBay.com.

In its IPO filing last month, ChannelAdvisor said that for the year ended Dec. 31, 2012, revenue increased 23% year over year to $53.59 million. Its net loss widened to $4.93 million from $3.86 million. Contributing to its net loss was a 24% increase in operating expenses. That increase included a 27% rise in sales and marketing expenses and a 14% rise in research and development costs.

Wingo will chair the “Amazon and Me” workshop June 4 at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Chicago.

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