Hot Features
Premium
Register to chat with like-minded investors on our interactive forums.
Axalta (NYSE:AXTA) floated its IPO today to a great deal of fanfare at the New York Stock Exchange, including a visit by NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon on hand for the ringing of the opening bell. AXTA shares opened at 20.94, more that 6% above the original asking price of 19.00. The company’s market cap is close to $4.8 billion. It raised $975 million from today’s IPO.
Formerly a division of Dupont (NYSE:DD) labeled as DuPont Performance Coatings, Axalta is a leading global company with almost 150 years of experience in the coatings industry, focused exclusively on providing customers with innovative, colorful, beautiful and sustainable solutions. Axalta’s coatings are designed to prevent corrosion, increase productivity and enable substrate materials to last longer.
Axalta provides specialty coatings to customers in 130 countries through 35 different manufacturing facilities and seven technical centers. The company has more than 12,000 employees. It’s primary operations are located in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and China.
Axalta was purchased from Dupont by the Washington, DC private equity firm, the Carlyle Group LP, for $4.9 billion. Carlyle has retained 77% of the shares issued at the time of today’s IPO.
For the six months ending 30 June, total Axalta revenue was up 22% over the previous year at $2.2 billion. It’s net profit of $52.1 million for that six months was a significant turnaround from a $178.3 million loss the previous year. Nearly 72% of the company’s total liabilities is in high-interest, long-term debt, so the board has been focusing on streamlining operations to generate greater operating profit which can be used to retire that load.
Axta owns more than 250 trademarks and has a robust portfolio of patents and proprietary information and technical expertise. As of its last six-month operation statement, the company owned more 1,300 patents and had more than 500 patents pending.
CEO Charles Shaver noted that, “We see really good, strong fundamental demand right now, even though some of the countries may not be growing their GDPs that great. The world’s desire for transportation at the individual level continues to grow.”
All proceeds from the IPO will go directly to the Axalta shareholders.
