BJ's Owners Register to Potentially Sell An Approximate 42% Stake in Company
WESTBOROUGH, MA - BJ’s Wholesale Club has filed forms with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week to prepare more than 58 million shares of common stock for sale. As a result, more than 42 percent of East Coast grocery chain BJ’s Wholesale Club may be headed to market—though no information on timing or strategy has yet been forthcoming.
“This prospectus relates to the offer and sale from time to time by the selling stockholders identified in this prospectus of up to an aggregate of 58,345,145 shares of our common stock…” BJ’s noted in an SEC filing, adding: “We will not receive any proceeds from the sale of our shares by the selling stockholders. The selling stockholders will receive all of the net proceeds and bear all commissions and discounts, if any, from the sale of our shares pursuant to this prospectus.”
The 58,345,145 shares listed in the filing and soon to be registered for sale—roughly 42 percent of the company’s approximately 136,838,000 outstanding shares—are jointly owned by two of BJ’s largest investors: Leonard Green & Partners and CVC Capital Partners, and those investors, not the company itself, stand to gain from any profits of a sale, the filing notes.
The two private equity investors pared down their holdings in BJ’s just last September, after BJ’s launched a successful IPO in June of 2018, selling 28 million shares of stock and thereby cede their authority as a “controlling company.” Now the two companies may be aiming to get out of BJ’s entirely and recoup their initial investment and any profit they may glean along with it.
BJ’s first sold to the two private equity firms in 2011.
How will the situation play itself out? Will a suitor emerge to take up the stock wholesale, so to speak?
AndNowUKnow will continue to report on this and other important retail happenings.
