Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc. (NYSE: APAM) is coming public today. The asset management firm had a premium deal priced for 11.054 million shares of its Class A stock at $30.00 per share as its debut price. The prior range was $27 to $29 per share. We would note that the offering’s amended prospectus shows that there are three classes of stock: A, B and C shares. The company also shows in the offering that if convertible preferred shares were all converted for shares Class A common stock immediately after the reorganization, then there would be 68,928,620 shares of Class A outstanding.

Artisan Partners is an independent investment management outfit that uses active investment strategies for sophisticated clients around the globe, with five autonomous investment teams managing 12 different investment strategies. As of February 15, 2013, Artisan Partners showed its assets under management were approximately $79.5 billion.

Citigroup and Goldman Sachs were listed as the book-runners, and other syndicate members were listed as BofA/Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Keefe Bruyette & Woods and Sandler O’Neill. The company has granted these underwriters an overallotment option allowing them to purchase up to 1,658,123 additional shares at the initial public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions.

The use of proceeds is rather long and a bit complicated compared to other IPOs:

We intend to use $90.0 million of the net proceeds to repay all of the then-outstanding principal amount of any loans under our revolving credit agreement, approximately $67.1 million of the net proceeds to purchase an aggregate of 2,562,970 Class A common units from certain of our initial outside investors, approximately $61.3 million to make a distribution of retained profits of Artisan Partners Holdings to its pre-offering partners and the balance for general corporate purposes, including working capital. Investors who purchase Class A common stock in this offering will not be entitled to a portion of the distribution of the retained profits. Pending the use of proceeds for general corporate purposes, we intend to invest that portion of the net proceeds in short-term money market and money-market equivalent securities. In connection with, but prior to the closing of, this offering, we also intend to make cash incentive compensation payments aggregating approximately $56.8 million to certain of our portfolio managers and to make an initial distribution of $40.0 million of Artisan Partners Holdings’ retained earnings to its pre-offering partners. These payments will be made prior to the consummation of the offering out of cash on hand.

It is interesting that TheStreet.com said to skip this IPO given the premium pricing.

The latest full pre-IPO filing is here.

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