Aramark files for $100M IPO

Institutional foodservice provider Aramark Holdings Corp. filed for an initial public offering Monday, seeking to raise about $100 million in a return to the public market.

The filing did not include the number of shares to be sold or any details on pricing.

Based in Philadelphia, Aramark is known for providing food, facilities and uniform services to schools, medical facilities, sports stadiums, business campuses and prisons around the world. North America serves as the firm’s largest market, but Aramark also has a presence in 19 other countries with about 267,000 employees globally, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Aramark, which has applied to list on the New York Stock Exchange, would use the proceeds from the potential sale to repay debt, including a portion of $3.3 billion in term loans that are scheduled to mature in July 2016 and $1.4 billion in term loans maturing in September 2019. The company had about $6.2 billion in total debt as of June 28 and about $98 million in cash, according to filings with the SEC.

Goldman Sachs & Co., J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC and Morgan Stanley will act as joint book running managers for the proposed offering.

The move would bring Aramark back to the New York Stock Exchange. The company went public for the first time in 2001, but then was delisted in 2007 in a management buyout led by GS Capital Partners, CCMP Capital Advisors, J.P. Morgan Partners, Thomas H. Lee Partners and Warburg Pincus LLC, as well as about 250 people on the senior management team.

Last year, Eric Foss, the previous chief executive of Pepsi Beverages Co. and chair and CEO of the Pepsi Bottling Group, was named CEO of Aramark. He replaced Joseph Neubauer, who remains chairman of the board.

Aramark reported about $13.5 billion in sales for the 12 months ending in September 2012. The company’s North America foodservice division generated about $9.4 billion in sales that year, representing about 70 percent of the company’s global business.

In filings, Aramark officials said the global food, support services and uniform market is about $900 billion, with only about half of that currently outsourced, offering a substantial opportunity for growth as institutions look to outside providers for such services to reduce costs.

Aramark’s competitors in North America include the foodservice giants Compass Group PLC, Centerplate Inc., Delaware North Companies Inc. and Sodexo.

Contact Lisa Jennings at [email protected].
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