Party City Holdco Inc. (NYSE: PRTY) shares made a handy gain early on Friday after the company announced a massive stock buyback. Party City is joining a growing group of companies repurchasing shares going into 2018.
According to the announcement, Party City will be purchasing 19,841,694 shares of common stock for an aggregate consideration of $242 million from Advent-Party City Acquisition Limited Partnership. Note that these are all of Advent’s shares.
Keep in mind that Party City has a total market cap of roughly $1.6 billion, and this purchase makes up about 15% of the total cap.
Party City intends to fund the share repurchase with borrowings under its revolving credit facility.
Back in November, the company announced a share repurchase program of up to $100 million of its outstanding common shares. Currently, Party City has not indicated anything as to the timing and amount of any additional share repurchases.
Jim Harrison, Party City CEO, commented:
We believe this transaction provides an opportunity to increase shareholder value and is immediately accretive to earnings per share. Additionally, this transaction removes a share over hang associated with Advent’s long term shareholder interest in the business. Our business maintains very strong cash flow characteristics, and with the added benefit to free cash flow associated with tax reform, we believe that we can meaningfully increase shareholder return without a material increase in our debt leverage. We remain committed to allocating capital in a manner that appropriately balances our growth objectives with continued focus on the disciplined pay down of debt, providing our shareholders with a strong opportunity for return.
Shares of Party City were last seen up about 13.5% at $13.85, with a consensus analyst price target of $15.20 and a 52-week trading range of $9.50 to $17.05.
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