- 11.67 million shares of JILL, priced at $13 per share, opened trading on the New York Stock Exchange at its launch, which was below the expected range of $14 to $16 per share.
- The retailer is receiving no proceeds from its IPO since its owner, private-equity firm TowerBrook, is unloading shares during the offering but will keep over 50% of J. Jill’s common stock.
- This is not J. Jill’s first IPO. It originally went public back in 1993, and was acquired by Talbot’s for $157 million in 2006 after they beat out Liz Claiborne in a bidding war. Talbot’s then sold J. Jill to private-equity firm Golden Gate Capital for just $75 million only three years later, and was sold again to TowerBrook in 2015 for a reported $400 million.
- J. Jill is a women’s apparel brand that has been around since 1959; its core customer base are affluent women between the ages of 40 and 65, and it has a heavy reliance on catalog and online sales.
