We might not see Shamu go public after all. According to a report in Reuters, it looks like SeaWorld is exploring a sale of the company to a group of private equity firms (though there was no mention of a valuation).
SeaWorld, which recently filed for an IPO, operates 11 water-based amusement parks featuring a total of 67,000 marine and terrestrial animals, including 28 killer whales.
Back in 2009, in the depths of the financial crisis, Blackstone Group (NYSE:BX) purchased SeaWorld from Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE:BUD) for about $2.7 billion. The firm’s sense for market timing seems pretty good considering Reuters says SeaWorld now might be worth as much as $4 billion.
And that’s why Blackstone still might go forward with the IPO. Other companies in SeaWorld’s sector have done quite well, as seen with the gains of Six Flags Entertainment (NYSE:SIX) and Cedar Fair (NYSE:FUN), which are up a respective 50% and 65% in the past year. And it seems unlikely that private equity firms would be willing to pay much of a premium to the current values in the public markets.
Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPO Playbook, a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He is also the author of “How to Create the Next Facebook” and “High-Profit IPO Strategies: Finding Breakout IPOs for Investors and Traders.” Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
A long-time follower of the IPO scene, back in 1999 Tom started one of the first sites in the space called WebIPO. It was a place where investors got research as well as access to deals for the dot-com boom. Tom also wrote the top-selling book, Investing in IPOs. In it, he covers all the aspects of analyzing an IPO, such as reading the prospectus, detecting the risk factors and understanding some of the arcane regulations. But don’t worry — if that process is too intimidating for you, thankfully Tom will do the legwork for you right here in the IPO Playbook blog.
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