NEW YORK • Jeans maker Levi Strauss & Co on Wednesday filed documents to list itself on the New York Stock Exchange, seeking to return to public markets after more than three decades.
Levi's, one of the world's biggest denim brands and the inventor of blue jeans, faces rapid changes in consumer tastes as people shop for cheaper store brands and athleisure apparel.
Last year, rival VF Corp said it would spin off its less profitable Wrangler and Lee jeans business into a publicly traded company, allowing it to focus on Vans and its outdoor wear businesses to help improve profit margins.
The 145-year-old company, which intends to list as "Levi", set a placeholder amount of US$100 million (S$136 million) to indicate the size of the initial public offering (IPO). The final size could be different.
The San Francisco, California-based company could be valued at around US$5 billion (S$6.8 billion) when it debuts, a CNBC report said in November. The Haas family, which traces its lineage to company founder Levi Strauss, owns almost 59 per cent of Levi's. A market valuation of US$5 billion would give the family a combined net worth of at least US$2.5 billion.
Bavarian-born Strauss emigrated to New York in 1848 and was lured to San Francisco by the California Gold Rush. Failing to find much gold, he started a West Coast branch of his brothers' wholesale dry goods business and called it Levi Strauss & Co. One day he received a letter from a customer, a Nevada tailor named Jacob Davis, who had started designing pants with rivets to make them last longer. He needed a business partner and Strauss was eager to collaborate.
The patent for the first pair of blue jeans was granted to the partners in 1873. When Strauss died unmarried and childless in 1902, the bulk of his US$6 million estate (worth US$175 million in today's dollars) passed to his four nephews and other relatives.
But it wasn't until after World War II that Levi's gained renown as a fashion product, having got a boost in global exposure from US soldiers sporting the brand. Western movies and Hollywood stars like James Dean further burnished its fashion cred.
The company's biggest individual shareholder is Ms Mimi Haas, with a 16.7 per cent stake, according to a prospectus. She is a vice-chair of New York's Museum of Modern Art and the widow of Levi Strauss' grandnephew by marriage, Mr Peter Haas Sr. He and his brother, Walter, succeeded their father, Walter Sr, in running the business in the 1940s and helped oversee the first IPO in 1971. Other major shareholders of the business include Peter's son, Peter Jr, and daughter Margaret, cousin Robert Haas and family members Daniel and Jennifer Haas.
Levi's is required to post quarterly earnings with US regulators as its Japanese arm, Levi Strauss K K, is publicly traded in Tokyo.
In its latest report, the American apparel company said sales rose nearly 9 per cent to US$1.59 billion. Its filings also show that it has halved its debt load over the last two years.
Levi's sells its products in more than 50,000 retail locations, including about 3,000 stores and shops-in-shops across 110 countries. It sells apparel under the Levi's, Dockers and Denizen brands.
With Levi's IPO filing, the company joins a list of high-profile companies seeking to go public this year including ride-hailing firm Uber Technologies, photo-posting app firm Pinterest and home-renting company Airbnb.
REUTERS, BLOOMBERG
