IHS Inc., a large Douglas County-based provider of technical and engineering standards, will have its long-delayed initial stock sale this week, company officials said.
IHS, which earlier this year postponed the IPO, is planning to price the stock Thursday, said Jane Okun, senior vice president of investor relations.
Typically, shares start trading the day after a price is set.
The company plans to raise $350 million on behalf of its controlling shareholder by offering 14.5 million shares of Class A common stock, according to a previous U.S. Securities and Exchange filing.
The shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol IHS.
The underwriters are Goldman Sachs & Co., Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, UBS Investment Bank, KeyBanc Capital Markets and Piper Jaffray.
“We are ready to be a public company,” Okun said. “It’s a good time for us.”
Okun and other IHS executives have been on a worldwide investor road show the past two weeks. They have visited with mostly institutional investors and hedge-fund managers.
In May, the company postponed its initial stock sale because of a weak market and concerns about receiving a “comfortable” share price, Okun said at the time.
IHS could be going forward with the IPO because of improved market conditions or improvements at the company, said securities lawyer Jim Linfield, managing partner of law firm Cooley Godward’s Broomfield office. As for the IPO postponement, Linfield said, “It’s not unusual to delay an offering based on market conditions.”
IHS, which employs more than 600 people in Colorado among its 2,300 workers worldwide, provides standards and regulation data to energy, automotive and aerospace businesses.
It was founded in Denver in 1959, and is privately held by TBG Holdings, based in Europe. It competes with divisions of Thomson Corp. and Reed Elsevier.
IHS posted $350 million in revenue for the nine months ending Aug. 31. It has little debt, company officials said.
Staff writer Will Shanley can be reached at 303-820-1260 or wshanley@denverpost.com.
