679c0558dc89ef1092710206 Smithfield

Smithfield Foods Goes Public at a Muted $20 per Share

Jan. 30, 2025
That's a lower price, and fewer shares, than envisioned a week ago; it promises to keep its U.S. plants open.

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.

About the Author

Dave Fusaro | Editor in Chief

Dave Fusaro has served as editor in chief of Food Processing magazine since 2003. Dave has 30 years experience in food & beverage industry journalism and has won several national ASBPE writing awards for his Food Processing stories. Dave has been interviewed on CNN, quoted in national newspapers and he authored a 200-page market research report on the milk industry. Formerly an award-winning newspaper reporter who specialized in business writing, he holds a BA in journalism from Marquette University. Prior to joining Food Processing, Dave was Editor-In-Chief of Dairy Foods and was Managing Editor of Prepared Foods.

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