Smithfield Foods launched its initial public offering of stock this Tuesday (Jan. 28), selling 26 million shares at $20 each – that’s below the $23 to $27 range the company estimated last week, also below the nearly 35 million shares first envisioned. Still, that pockets $261 million each for it and its Chinese owner, WH Group.
The offering consisted of 13,043,479 shares of common stock owned by the company and an identical number sold by WH Group. The underwriters of the offering have a 30-day option to purchase an additional 3,913,042 shares. Somehow the math works out to giving Smithfield a market capitalization north of $8 billion, according to Reuters.
Reuters also reported Smithfield said it plans to keep all its U.S. plants operating. WH Group still controls about 90% of Smithfield.
Smithfield and WH Group officials rang the opening bell Tuesday at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, where the company has the trading symbol SFD.
It’s been more than a decade since the company was publicly traded. Smithfield has been owned by China’s WH Group since 2013, and the combined company went public in Hong Kong in 2014.
Smithfield is the largest pork producer in the U.S., with 2023 sales of $14.175 billion and approximately 34,000 employees nationwide. In September 2024, WH Group split Smithfield’s European operations into a subsidiary called Morliny Foods, one part of a number of streamlining efforts before going public.