Off-Strip Las Vegas company Station Casinos to go public
LAS VEGAS (AP) - The off-Strip casino-hotel chain Station Casinos that caters to Las Vegas locals is going public, again.
The company announced last week it plans to make a public stock offering and use some of the money it raises to buy out a related management company for $460 million in cash.
Brothers Frank Fertitta III and Lorenzo Fertitta own the four-year-old management company as well as a 58 percent stake in Station Casinos.
The Fertitta family doesn't expect to go anywhere, noting in its prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it would retain control.
Deutsche Bank Securities owns 25 percent and expects to make more than 5 percent of the net proceeds from the public offering.
The company hasn't revealed how much it expects to raise from the public offering, when it will go public, at what share price and which stock market it will be traded on.
The Fertitta's father started Station Casinos in 1976 with Palace Station off the Las Vegas Strip before the brothers assumed control in 1993, taking it public.
The chain went private in 2007 when the Fertitta family spent $8.7 billion in a debt-heavy buy-out that pushed it into bankruptcy in mid-2009 amid the recession, emerging two years later with less debt.
The company says it has since cut its debt by $450 million to $2 billion and has invested $330 million in its properties.
Station Casinos made a profit of $73.7 million in the first half of 2015, down from $77.3 million during the same time a year ago.
The company owns or partly owns 21 casinos in the Las Vegas area, Northern California and Michigan.
Most of its properties are in the Las Vegas area including Palace Station, Boulder Station and Sunset Station as well as the Red Rock Casino and Green Valley Ranch resorts.
The company also owns about 290 acres in Las Vegas and Reno that is entitled for casinos.
Alex Bumazhny, a gambling industry analyst with Fitch Ratings, said he isn't sure what's making Station Casinos press the button on going public now, except that the investor view of Las Vegas-centric gambling companies has been positive.
There's construction on the Las Vegas Strip and the economy is on the upswing, he said.
At the moment, though, the broader equity market has been volatile.
"It's a little puzzling," he said of the IPO timing.
Station Casinos, as a private company, is a rarity among its public casino-hotel neighbors in Las Vegas. Going public can come with greater access to capital and increase cash on hand, he said.