Ballast Point Brewing & Spirits, Inc. today filed a form S-1 with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), indicating its intent to become a publicly traded company.
The initial public offering (IPO) is valued at $172.5 million, according to filings, and underwriters include Goldman, Sachs & Co., Morgan Stanley, Baird, BMO Capital, Cowen and Company and Nomura.
Ballast Point’s proposed NASDAQ Global Select Market symbol is “PINT.”
The Offering
Reached by email, Jim Buechler, CEO of the San Diego-based craft brewery, declined to comment on specific terms of the IPO citing an SEC-mandated “quiet period” which restricts companies from commenting on registration statements until SEC staff declares them “effective.”
In its filing, the company did not indicate how many shares of class A common stock it intends to offer or how many shares of class A common stock its shareholders plan to offer.
According to the document, founder Jack White Jr., currently owns 50.9 percent of the company and holds 100 percent (3.22 million shares) of Class B common stock as well as 109,509 class A shares. CEO Jim Buechler owns 542,500 class A shares (about 8.3 percent of the company) while chief commercial officer Earl Kight owns 30,000 class A shares.
Class A stockholders will be entitled to one vote per share while class B stockholders will be entitled to ten votes per share, the company said in its filing.
“After this offering, our founder, Jack White Jr., will continue to control a majority of the voting power of our outstanding common stock,” Ballast Point said in the filing.
The Company
Best known for its popular Sculpin IPA brand, Ballast Point has grown rapidly since 2012, posting a compound annual growth rate of 81.8 percent.
According to filings, the company produced 122,890 barrels of beer in 2014 and recorded $48.9 million in net revenue. Just two years prior, the brewery sold 37,000 barrels of beer and had net revenues of $14 million.
Through June 30, 2015, Ballast Point said it had made 118, 831 barrels of beer and grown net revenues to more than $51 million.
Founded in 1992 as “Home Brew Mart,” a home brewing supply store, Ballast Point first began brewing commercially in 1996. The company currently operates four brewing facilities in the San Diego area and produces more than 15 year-round styles of beer.
The company outlined a number of risk factors in the filing, including a heavy reliance on sales from its flagship Sculpin IPA brands as well as its home state of California.
“Although we are increasingly becoming a national brand and currently have sales in over 30 states, approximately 53 percent of our revenue from brewing operations in the six months ended June 30, 2015 was derived from beer sales in California and, consequently, our future revenue may be adversely affected by changes in economic and business conditions in California,” it said in the filing.
Nevertheless, Ballast Point said it was “well positioned” for continued profitable growth.
“We believe there is a significant opportunity to expand our domestic distribution footprint by deepening our presence within existing markets and entering new markets,” it said.
In doing so, the company said it plans to “explore opening additional retail and production facilities in select geographies.”