The Container Store has begun to hire advisers to prepare for a potential initial public offering, a person briefed on the matter said on Wednesday, nearly five years after selling itself to the private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners.
Among the firms that the Container Store has hired is JPMorgan Chase, this person added. It isn’t clear whether the retail storage company will go forward with a stock sale or how much it would seek in an offering.
The Container Store, which unsurprisingly focuses on storage products, is one of the latest companies owned by private equity firms that is weighing an initial offering or sale. Favorable stock markets and fantastically cheap debt financing have made the prospects of a successful I.P.O. or merger transaction attractive to owners eager to generate a return on their investment.
Among the companies that private equity firms have taken public of late include SeaWorld, the theme park operator controlled by the Blackstone Group, and Quintiles Transnational, a pharmaceutical testing company owned by TPG and Bain Capital. And Warburg Pincus sold Bausch & Lomb to Valeant Pharmaceuticals last week for $8.7 billion.
Last year, the Container Store pulled in $706 million in sales, up 11 percent from the previous year.
A spokeswoman for the Container Store declined to comment.
News of Container Store’s plans was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
