SeaWorld Entertainment, the Blackstone Group-controlled theme park operator famous for its killer whales, filed for an initial public offering on Thursday.
Under the terms of the listing, Blackstone, which bought the theme park group from Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2009 for around $2.7 billion, will keep a majority of the voting rights in SeaWorld. The company did not provide a specific timeline for the I.P.O.
In the filing, SeaWorld said the offering would raise as much as $100 million, but that was a figure used to calculate the registration fee and could chang e. Reuters reported earlier this month that the offering could raise as much as $600 million, citing unnamed sources.
SeaWorld is one of the largest entertainment park operators in the U.S. after the Walt Disney Company. It operates 11 theme parks across the United States, including the Busch Gardens parks in Williamsburg, Va., and in Tampa, Fla., and Sesame Place in Langhorne, Pa., as well as Sea World parks in Orlando, Fla., San Diego and San Antonio, Texas. The company says it has “the largest group of killer whales in human care,†with 28.
The parks attracted 24 million visitors during the 12 months through Sept. 30, according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company generated $1.2 billion of revenue during the first nine months of 2012, according to the filing.
SeaWorld said the money raised through the offering would be used to repay debt, make a one-time payment to a Blackstone affiliate and for other business activities.
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup , Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays and Wells Fargo are leading the underwriting of the SeaWorld offering.
