Bausch & Lomb, an eye-care company majority-owned by Warburg Pincus, filed documents in preparation for its initial public offering. The company state in its registration filing that Warburg Pincus would still be a majority shareholder after the IPO. The company declined to comment on the size of the offering. The planned IPO could raise as much as $1.5 billion.
Last December, Bausch & Lomb was looking for strategic options. It was reported that the company hired Goldman Sachs to look for a deal. It hoped to get more than $10 billion. During that time, when an acceptable bid was not found, Warburg Pincus would go for an initial public offering instead. Warburg expected up to $10 billion in a sale or IPO.
Last March 15, Bausch & Lomb’s board declared a cash dividend of $7.40 per share. It resulted to distributions of $772 million to shareholders, most of which going to Warburg Pincus. The company funded the dividend payout by borrowing $700 million under a new unsecured loan and $100 million from its revolving credit facility.
Bausch & Lomb got a net loss of $68.3 million in 2012, which is down from a loss of $123.9 million the previous year. It had revenue of $3.04 billion in 2012, which is up from $2.8 billion in 2011.
Bausch & Lomb was found in 1853 by John Jacob Bausch and Henry Lomb. It was previously publicly traded from December 1958 to October 2007 as BOL. At present, it has more than 11,000 workers across the globe and still has its headquarters in Rochester.
