Bain Capital successfully sells Burlington Stores stock

On Tuesday, the private equity giant Bain Capital owned Burlington Stores Inc.

On Wednesday, Burlington Stores, parent company of Burlington Coat Factory, launched an initial public offering.

By Friday, Bain Capital still owned Burlington Stores, just not as much.

Slightly more than 13.3 million shares, with the ticker symbol BURL, were offered for sale on the New York Stock Exchange at an initial price of $17 per share. The stock closed Friday at $25.89.

Bain Capital will go from owning 93.3 percent of the stock to 75.8 percent or 73.7 percent, depending on whether the IPO underwriters opt to buy up to two million more shares at a discounted price. Pending that decision, Burlington Stores will raise between $205 million and $226 million with the stock sale.

Founded in 1972 by Monroe Milstein and his family, the Burlington County company began by selling coats and outerwear. It moved to other merchandise and found a home in the off-price retail category, competing with TJ Maxx and Ross stores.

Bain Capital bought Burlington in 2006 for $2.1 billion. According to the prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as of Aug. 3, the company had 29,556 employees and 502 stores in 44 states, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and Puerto Rico. The company also sells online.

Bain Capital got a bit more attention during the 2012 presidential race because Republican Mitt Romney, who made his fortune at Bain, suggested that 47 percent of Americans can't be persuaded to take personal responsibility for themselves. President Obama won reelection with help from women, African Americans and Hispanics.

Burlington's prospectus says its "core customer is the 25-49-year-old woman," and "we have a diverse customer base that has a higher proportion of African-Americans and people of Hispanic origin as well as families with kids relative to the U.S. population."

Bain often uses debt to generate cash via companies it acquires. The prospectus says cash from the stock sale will be used to pay off $190.2 million in corporate debt.

Burlington had $2.03 billion in sales in the six months prior to Aug. 3 but reported a net loss of $30.6 million for the period. Part of what happened in between, the filing says, is the company paid $67.5 million in interest expense and $335.7 million in dividends to shareholders. Bain and 17 executives held about 97.1 percent of the stock.

Chief executive Thomas Kingsbury was hired in 2008. Bain bumped Kingsbury's base salary from $887,167 in fiscal year 2011 to $958,291 in 2012. Kingsbury was not available for an interview, a spokeswoman said.

"We are very excited about this milestone in our corporate development," Kingsbury said in a statement. "This is just one step in a longer journey, and I'd like to acknowledge the outstanding effort from those at Burlington who worked tirelessly on our transformation to make this day possible."