Petco to Go Public After Filing for IPO

Petco Holdings, Inc. is to become public again nine years after the pet store operator was purchased by two private equity firms.

The company filed an amended S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). No terms were given in the filing, and Petco has not yet announced what exchange it will file on or the symbol it will file under.

The company will not receive proceeds from the offering, which will instead go to the selling stockholders. The private equity firms and other investors are to retain majority voting power after Petco’s IPO.

Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Jefferies, Wells Fargo, TPG Capital, Piper Jaffray, Stifel, Cantor Fitzgerald, Guggenheim and Nomura are the underwriters for the offering.

There are approximately 1,400 Petco stores in the U.S. and 13 in Mexico, which are run through a joint venture. The company says it earned $75 million in net income during the latest fiscal year.

While Petco’s profits have decreased over the past two years, they improved during the first half of the current fiscal year.

When the company was acquired by TPG Global and Leonard Green & Partners in 2006, they paid $29 per share and $1.68 billion in total. Petco’s stock had lost half of its value during the 18 months prior to the deal’s announcement.