Bob’s Discount Furniture raised US$330.7m late Wednesday from its NYSE IPO, just months after paying Bain Capital and other shareholders a dividend.
JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, RBC Capital Markets and UBS priced 19.5m shares at US$17.00, the bottom of the US$17–$19 marketing range. The low-end pricing came despite a book that was multiple times oversubscribed and included several anchor-sized orders, bankers involved in the offering told IFR.
The discount furniture will debut Thursday on the NYSE under the ticker "BOBS".
"(That) Bob’s is going public with no leverage negated any concerns about the use of proceeds,” said one banker.
Together with cash on hand, Bob's is using proceeds from the IPO to repay US$339m of debt, leaving it debt free. While the deal was all-primary, principal owner Bain Capital is contributing shares to the greenshoe.
In October, Bob's paid a US$423.3m debt-funded dividend to Bain and other shareholders. Pre-IPO dividends may draw scrutiny, but they remain a common tool to crystallize private-equity returns.
Bain Capital, which purchased the business way back in 2014, saw its stake diluted to 75.4%, falling to 73.2% if the greenshoe is fully exercised.
A debt-free balance sheet gives Bob's the flexibility to continue growing through new store openings.
At launch, Bob’s estimated Q4 adjusted Ebitda of US$73.5m–$76.5m on a 7.7% growth in revenue to US$646m–$648m, taking full year 2025 adjusted Ebitda and revenue to US$237.8m–$240.8m and US$2.36bn.
Bob’s opened 17 stores in 2025, including six in North Carolina, to give it a current footprint of 206 stores in 26 states. That is part of its plan to expand to 500 stores by 2035.