Apollo IPO To Price Later Today

In the biggest run-up to a non-event, the long-awaited IPO from Apollo Management will price later today, a source says.

Apollo is offering roughly 26.3 million Class A shares at $17 to $19 each. Apollo itself is selling 18 million shares while certain shareholders are offering about 8.3 million shares. Joint bookrunners on the deal include Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, BofA Merrill Lynch, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank Securities and UBS Investment Bank. Underwriters on the deal have an option to buy another 3.9 million shares, according to a statement.

Goldman Sachs, a bookrunner on the deal, is selling about 2 million shares in the IPO and will own a 2.3% stake (of Class A shares) in Apollo after the IPO, according to a March 21 regulatory filing. None of Apollo’s management, employees, affiliates or strategic investors are offering shares in the offering. Apollo plans to trade on the NYSE under the ticker “APO.”

If the offering does price later today (usually this happens after 6 pm ET but that’s not set in stone), Apollo will likely go public tomorrow. The PE firm will join Blackstone and KKR as a publicly traded buyout shop. Fortress is also public but I consider them more hedge than PE. The offering is one of a handful of companies slated to go public this week. GNC, the vitamin retailer backed by Ares Management and the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan, is also going IPO and looking to sell 22.5 million shares at $15 to $17 each.