IPO Filing:The Vitamin Shoppe or VS Holdings

Vitamin Shoppe, Inc. has filed to come public via an IPO under the "VSI" ticker on NYSE.  The amount filed for declarartion purposes was up to $150 million in securities, although that is for filing purposes only and may be far different at the time of the IPO.  Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros., and Banc of America are the book-runners with co-managers listed as Piper Jaffray, Wachovia, and Cowen & Co.

The Vitamin Shoppe is a store based, online, and catalog-based sales organization that sells….you guessed it: vitamins and nutritional supplements.  As of April 30, it operated 317 stores in 31 states.  Since the start of 2003 it has opened 191 stores, so it has been growing aggressively via new stores. 

Net sales grew from $331.2 million in fiscal 2003 to $486.0 million in fiscal 2006.  It claims 15-years of consecutive comparable store sales growth.  Its retail sales segment in 2006 accounted for $407.5 milllion of the $486 million in total sales and it generated income from operations of $29.5 million in fiscal 2006.

The company will have to be able to prove its growth, but in looking at the footprint it is more than obvious that it should easily have much room to grow.  To prove a point, GNC (General Nutrition Centers, has more than 4,800 ‘locations’ inside the US with 1,000 of those being franchises and another 1,200 store-within-a-store concepts.  That is still a far larger market that Vitamin Shoppe can pursue.

Jon C. Ogg
May 23, 2007