Wayne Farms, the sixth largest broiler company in the United States, has filed a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering (IPO) of Class A common stock.
The company did not specify the number of shares to be sold and the pricing.
It has not been revealed which exchange Wayne Farms plans to list its shares, but said it plans to trade under the symbol WNFM, according to an RTT News report.
The move to file for an IPO follows earlier statements made by Paul Fribourg, CEO of Wayne Farms’ parent company Continental Grain. He said that an IPO may be a way for the company to gain capital as commodity markets continue to change.
“We were at the low of the commodities cycle in chicken, because grain prices were very high and chicken prices were low. So there was an opportunity to go out and buy very cheap chicken companies,” Fribourg said at a forum in November. “Today the cycle has gone to the other extreme, where you have incredibly high chicken prices and very low grain prices. It’s not going to last. So at the top of the cycle we’re now looking at ways to lock in either long-term margins, or possibly, for example, take our chicken company public.”
According to the WATT Global Media Top Companies database, Wayne Farms processes 335.4 million birds annually. It has nine slaughter plants, nine hatcheries, eight feed mills and 3,575 growout houses.
