Travel advisors, like the general public, soon will be able to own a piece of Viking Holdings Ltd. Headed to an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, the company expects to soon be selling ordinary shares at $21-$25, for a total market capitalization of between $9.06 billion and $10.79 billion.
Viking will have 431.46 million shares outstanding after the IPO, including 303.68 million ordinary shares that carry one vote each, and 127.8 million special shares that have 10 votes each. They will trade under the ticker symbol “VIK.”
At the top price, the sale will bring in $825 million, and make Viking the third-largest NYSE-listed cruise company, behind Royal Caribbean ($33.7 billion) and Carnival Corp. ($17.7 billion), and ahead of Norwegian ($7.81 billion)
Viking founder and CEO Torstein Hagen will maintain a controlling stake in the company, with 52.5% of the shares outstanding and 87% of the voting power.
“The principal purposes of this offering are to increase our capitalization and financial flexibility and to create a public market for our ordinary shares,” the company said, and it does not plan to pay a dividend.
Hagen chose a good time to go public, with the cruise industry booming. In the past year, shares are up 100% at Royal Caribbean and more than 50% at Carnival Corp.
