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BJ’s Wholesale Club Plans Public Market Return With IPO Filing

CVC-Backed BJ’s Wholesale Club Files for U.S. Public Offering

(Bloomberg) -- BJ’s Wholesale Club Holdings Inc., the warehouse-club chain that was taken private by CVC and Leonard Green & Partners seven years ago, filed for a U.S. initial public offering.

The private equity firms paid $51.25 a share for BJ’s in 2011, valuing it at about $2.8 billion. Since then, BJ’s has opened 25 new stores and spent more than $230 million to improve its systems and technology, according to a filing Thursday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

BJ’s listed the offering size at $100 million in the filing. That figure is a placeholder amount for calculating fees and will likely change. The company posted net income of $50 million for its fiscal 2018 on total revenue of $12.8 billion. That compares with profits of $44 million on $12.4 billion in sales a year earlier.

The company, which considers New England its home market, has 215 stores in 16 states. BJ’s plans to use the proceeds of the IPO to repay debt.

Based in Westborough, Massachusetts, BJ’s applied to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol BJ. Bank of America Corp., Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are leading the deal.

To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Fournier in New York at efournier5@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Aaron Kirchfeld at akirchfeld@bloomberg.net, Matthew Monks

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