Shares in CommScope were treading water Friday following an initial public offering that raised about $570 million, well off the $750 million the company had originally hoped for when it filed documents in August.
CommScope priced 38.5 million shares at $15 each, down from its originally expected range of $18 to $21 per share. Of that total, CommScope is offering 30.76 million shares, and an affiliate of The Carlyle Group is offering 7.69 million shares.
CommScope said it expects to receive proceeds from this offering, net of underwriting discounts, of approximately $437.3 million and intends to use the net proceeds it receives from the offering, plus cash on hand, to redeem approximately $399 million in aggregate principal amount of CommScope’s 8.25% Senior Notes due 2019 and to pay related premiums, expenses and accrued interest.
CommScope shares, trading under the “COMM” symbol on the Nasdaq, were down 3 cents (0.19%) to $14.97 each in mid-day trading Friday.
CommScope’s return to life as a public company comes more than two-and-a-half years after The Carlyle Group took the technology supplier private in 2011 for $3.9 billion.
The Hickory, N.C.-based company makes a wide range of gear, including data center equipment, small cell antenna and in-building cellular infrastructure, coaxial optical and twisted pair cable, back-up power systems, connectors, and provides network design services.
On the cable front, it has been focusing on products based on the Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP), a next-gen, dense access architecture that combines the functionality of the edge QAM and the cable modem termination system (CMTS). That will pit it against Arris, Cisco Systems, Casa Systems and Harmonic. CommScope entered the CCAP game in June 2011 via its acquisition of edge QAM startup LiquidxStream Systems.
J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank Securities and BofA Merrill Lynch are acting as lead book-running managers. Additional book-running managers are Barclays, Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Goldman, Sachs & Co., Jefferies, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, RBC Capital Markets and Wells Fargo Securities. Co-Managers are Allen & Company LLC, Evercore, Raymond James, Mizuho Securities, SMBC Nikko and Drexel Hamilton.
