Company plans to list shares on NYSE under symbol 'ACI'

BOISE, Idaho — Albertsons Cos. has launched an initial public offering involving 6.8 million shares of its common stock, the company announced Thursday. The retailer plans to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “ACI.”

The stock will be sold by some of the company’s stockholders at an expected price of between $18 and $20 per share, according to the company, which said it is not selling any shares as part of the offering.

The company added that it will not receive any net proceeds from the sale of common stock by the selling stockholders, including from any exercise by the underwriters of their option to purchase additional shares of its common stock from the selling stockholders.

This will be the third IPO attempt by Albertsons Cos., which operates stores across 34 states and the District of Columbia under 20 different banners, including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Pavillions, Randalls, Tom Thumb, Carrs, Jewel-Osco, Acme, Shaw’s, Star Market, United Supermarkets, Market Street and Haggen.

The company, which was taken private in 2006 by an investment group led by Cerberus Capital Management, planned to go public in an IPO in 2015, following its merger with Safeway. But that attempt was dropped in the face of a weak market for retail stocks. Another effort in 2018 was planned as part of the company’s planned acquisition of Rite Aid Corp., but that was abandoned when the Rite Aid deal was sunk by the drug chain’s shareholders.

BofA Securities, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan and Citigroup are acting as lead joint book-running managers for the common stock offering, according to Albertsons Cos., which added that Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo Securities, Barclays and Deutsche Bank Securities are acting as book-running managers for the common stock offering. BMO Capital Markets, Evercore ISI, Guggenheim Securities, Oppenheimer & Co., RBC Capital Markets, Telsey Advisory Group, MUFG, Academy Securities, Blaylock Van, LLC, Drexel Hamilton, Loop Capital Markets, Penserra Securities LLC, Ramirez & Co., Inc., Stern and Tigress Financial Partners are acting as co-managers for the common stock offering.

The offering will be made only by prospectus, the company said.