(Bloomberg) -- StandardAero Inc. shares climbed 36% in the aircraft maintenance services provider’s trading debut, after the firm and some of its investors raised $1.44 billion in an initial public offering.
The company’s shares closed at $32.75 each on Wednesday in New York, giving the company a market value of nearly $11 billion, based on the outstanding shares in an earlier filing. The IPO priced at $24 per share.
The leap gives the Carlyle Group Inc.-backed company the best first-day performance for a US IPO raising more than $1 billion since Toast Inc. shares jumped 56% in the software firm’s 2021 trading debut, according to Bloomberg calculations.
The offering priced above a marketed range, with StandardAero and affiliates of Carlyle and Singaporean sovereign wealth investor GIC Pte selling 60 million shares in total, after the deal size was increased.
Funds affiliated with BlackRock Inc., Janus Henderson Group Plc and Norway’s $1.8 trillion sovereign wealth fund had separately indicated their interest in buying as much as $275 million worth of shares at the IPO price, the filing showed.
The trading lends a dose of optimism to companies moving ahead with US IPOs before the market for new listings is effectively closed by the election on Nov. 5. On Monday, Cerebras Systems kicked off an IPO that could raise as much as $1 billion, and Platinum Equity-backed technology firm Ingram Micro Holding Corp. filed for its own much-anticipated IPO.
StandardAero is the largest pure-play provider of aerospace engine after-market services for fixed and rotary wing aircraft, serving the commercial, military and business aviation end markets, according to its filing. Customers include GE Aerospace, Honeywell International Inc. and Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc.
Cash for Deals
The first thing StandardAero will do with the IPO proceeds is pay down its most expensive debt, which will free up a “significant amount” of cash, according to Chief Executive Officer Russell Ford. That will enable the firm to pursue more deals, along the lines of the 11 companies StandardAero has acquired in the past seven years.
“We have a very good pipeline to continue that growth over the next decade, so why wouldn’t we be able to continue to do that?” he said in an interview with Bloomberg News.
The Scottsdale, Arizona-based company had a profit through the first half of the year, reversing earlier annual losses, according to the filing. For the first half of the year, StandardAero had net income of $8.6 million on revenue of $2.6 billion. That compared with a loss of about $12.6 million on $2.3 billion in revenue during the same period in 2023.
Carlyle had previously invested in StandardAero between 2004 and 2007, Douglas Brandely, a partner at Carlyle focusing on aerospace investments, told Bloomberg News in an interview. The firm purchased StandardAero from Veritas Capital in a deal that completed in 2019, a statement at the time showed. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
Carlyle continues to control the company after the IPO, according to the filing.
“We see strong demand for engine maintenance — driven by long-term growth in demand for air travel and a global aircraft fleet that continues to age due to the slow pace of new aircraft deliveries — and we very much see that continuing,” Brandely said.
For investors, there aren’t a lot of opportunities to find a “no excuses company” at StandardAero’s size, Ford said.
“StandardAero is as clean of a company as you’re going to see — no customer issues, no quality issues, no labor issues, no environmental issues, all the things you see that are constantly troubling for companies,” he said.
Carlyle had explored a potential sale for StandardAero but decided to pursue an IPO because bids valued the company below what it was expected to reach in a listing, Bloomberg News reported in September.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley led the offering, the filing shows. Bank of America Corp., UBS Group AG, Jefferies Financial Group Inc. and Royal Bank of Canada were also among the total of 17 book-running managers and co-managers. StandardAero’s shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SARO.
(Updates with closing price in first three paragraphs and interviews starting in eighth paragraph.)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.