Bob's uses IPO to repay debt-funded dividend
Bob’s Discount Furniture raised US$330.7m late on 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 19.45m shares at US$17, 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.
"[That] Bob's is going public with no leverage negated any concerns about the use of proceeds,” said one banker.
Even so, shares of the discount furniture chain traded heavily on their debut, closing on Thursday at US$17.05.
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 crystallise private-equity returns.
Bain Capital, which purchased the business 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.
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.