The initial public offering of La Quinta Holdings, owned by the Blackstone Group, was priced at $17 per share on Tuesday, valuing the hotel chain at about $2.1 billion
La Quinta’s IPO raised $650 million, after its offering of 38.25 million shares was priced below an expected range of $18 to $21 a share.
Irving, Texas-based La Quinta is selling all the shares in the offering.
Shares of the company, which are expected to start trading on Wednesday, will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol.
La Quinta in a statement said it expects net proceeds of about $618 million from the offering after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions.
JP Morgan and?Morgan Stanley?are the lead underwriters for the offering. Other notable underwriters include BofA?Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank Securities and Goldman Sachs.
La Quinta is the third hotel chain to be taken public by Blackstone, the world’s largest publicly listed alternative asset manager, in the past six months. Blackstone has been aggressively selling or taking public its real estate assets as the U.S. hotel industry has been recovering.
Blackstone, whose stock closed down 2.4 percent at $30.42 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, was initially exploring a sale of La Quinta, which it took private in a $3.4 billion deal in 2006.
Blackstone took Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc public in the biggest-ever hotel IPO in December. It also bought shopping center company Brixmor Property Group Inc and hotel chain Extended Stay America Inc to the market last year.
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Source: Shubhankar Chakravorty and Avik Das (2014). UPDATE 1-Hotel chain La Quinta valued at $2.1 billion in IPO, Reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/09/laquinta-ipo-idUSL2N0N025U20140409 published Apr 08, 2014. Viewed Apr 10, 2014.